


Explosive Decompression

by altunderscore



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Not a fix-fic, Post-Save Arcadia Bay Ending, Standard LiS warnings because Arcadia Bay is a shithole and people are terrible, The non-con Archive Warning is for Kate's incident just for clarity/safety, these girls just want to go to school man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-02-22 11:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 57,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22415449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altunderscore/pseuds/altunderscore
Summary: Max trusted that Chloe knew what she asked for. Now she has to navigate the consequences of her choice that Friday afternoon. It isn't easy. Elsewhen, a girl realizes that maybe she isn't a very good friend, and tries to change. A look at grief, guilt, and healing. Post Bay-Ending, but only just. Slight AU. Warnings for dark themes.  Chasefield. Ongoing.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Victoria Chase
Comments: 80
Kudos: 164





	1. Constant Headache

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

1

* * *

If life were anything at all like a movie, there would have been rain at Chloe's funeral.

It had rained for Kate.

The rain had _stopped_ for Kate.

She remembered how the rain had looked; clear suspended slivers streaked on air as though it were a misty windowpane. How Kate had looked, silhouetted on the rooftop against the thunderheads as Max had fought like running through tar for even one more inch closer to her before reality came slamming back and Kate fell-

But Kate hadn't fallen.

With blood pooling in the back of her throat and stars skittering across her vision Max had brought Kate down from the ledge and hugged her tight enough to bruise.

So what fucking grudge did the world bear against Chloe Price that it would hunt her, relentlessly, until she was dead and gone?

Max grit her teeth hard enough to drown out the droning of the preacher as the sun beat down on Chloe's casket like a victory drum.

Max felt like a failure for only a moment before she realized that she hadn't actually failed at all. This- Joyce breaking apart at the seams next to her, the sunny little funeral, a whole and undisturbed Blackwell, Chloe _in that fucking box_ \- was all really a success.

Max had _chosen_ this.

The void in her chest where her heart should be was what winning felt like.

For just a second Max let herself imagine what it would be like if that hole inside her expanded just a little.

Just enough.

Only wide enough for her heart to have taken her body with it when it died on that bathroom floor.

Max felt something in her jaw shift.

That wasn't good.

Joyce took her eyes off of Chloe and looked at Max to her side with concern apparent even through all the heartbreak.

Joyce had heard that. That was even worse.

Max smiled at Joyce as best she could and took her hand in her own for long enough to squeeze reassuringly, which seemed to be enough for Joyce to again focus on the service.

This gave her the window she needed to slide the snapped third of one of her upper molars into the pocket of her cheek and swallow the teaspoon or so of blood welling up in her mouth before it stained her teeth.

She caught David (Mr. Madsen currently, as they had never directly spoken to each other in this timeline) focusing on her from under the brow of his tan military beret. Max felt his eyes search for something in her expression, and she knew the instant he found it.

His jaw set and his lips pulled flat, but all he did was solemnly nod in her direction before clasping Joyce's hand in his own and shifting his attention back to the words sliding out of the preacher's mouth.

Max wasn't an expert, but she knew enough superficially from movies her dad watched to know that colored berets meant something different in the army. Mr. Madsen had probably buried a few of his friends before, too. If anybody got to look at her like they understood, it'd probably be him.

Max blinked, and quietly let out the breath she had been holding. Her right hand slid into her small bag and found a handkerchief that she then brought up to her face to rub at her cheeks. As carefully as she could, she pushed the broken tooth into the damp silk cloth, disguising the movement as just wiping at her nose, and returned the handkerchief to her bag.

The preacher's words paused for a moment and a handful of birds chose that instant to fill the empty air with song.

It made Max sick.

Max's hands balled into fists as she forced herself to look away from the old man at the pulpit and the long box at his feet.

The crowd wasn't overly large.

Joyce and David stood between Chloe and Max, following along with the preacher as best they could. Kate stood a few feet away from Max; her head bowed and hands clasped together. Max could see her lips moving but couldn't hear what she was saying. She didn't need to to know that Kate was praying earnestly for everyone here.

A bit farther away was Warren, trying very hard to look anywhere but at her. His suit fit him well, actually. Max kept her eyes on him; he always looked away when she caught him looking at her, even if it was just a benign glance.

It wasn't _usually_ a benign glance, but she could almost guarantee Warren wouldn't be looking at her with eyes like _that_ at a funeral.

-There. He looked back and Max held his gaze. He looked uncertain for a moment, like his brain was telling him to do too many things at once, so she smiled at him as well as she could manage (which wasn't very well) and when he nodded back to her she brought herself back to the preacher's speech.

Max still couldn't understand what he was saying. He sounded like he was underwater. That was odd. Max didn't pay him very much attention.

On the far side of Chloe stood a few of the nicer girls from Max's dorm. She had exchanged a few words with them before the service started and had found out that a couple of the girls (but mostly Dana) had known Chloe through Rachel Amber and had been friends.

Max couldn't really think of anyone Dana Ward wasn't friends with, but that wasn't the point. Getting to hear that Rachel had come to Dana for ideas about dying her hair for Chloe's birthday last year had gotten a genuine smile out of Max, and she'd be taking each and every one of those she could get for the near future.

On the far side of them, looking uncomfortable and out-of-place, was Victoria.

She stood with one hand holding her other wrist tightly enough to flare the sleeve of her cardigan and had her head bowed, too. Her black dress was perfect, but it looked a size too big for her. Her eyes were closed like Kate's, but Victoria's lips weren't moving. _Nothing_ was moving, from what Max could tell. She couldn't even see her breathe.

Still, she looked better than the last time Max had seen her. Or the time before that.

Victoria was alive. Chloe was in that box right in front of them, and Victoria was alive over there.

And Joyce was alive too.

And Warren and Dana, and Kate and everyone else in Arcadia Bay. Even Nathan was alive now, despite how conflicted that made her feel.

It only took all of Chloe and most of Max.

The preacher finally finished speaking and the short silence snapped Max's attention back to the pulpit. The clergyman gestured to Mr. Madsen and Joyce and the two of them stepped away from Max to approach him.

They exchanged a few quiet words, the preacher reached a comforting arm around Joyce's shoulders, and some men in uniforms stepped forward to bring Chloe to that _hole in the ground and_ -

Max was in her room.

It was 2:00 AM, and Max was in her room. Sitting on her bed. Fully clothed.

Well, at some point she had apparently taken her shoes off, but she couldn't remember when.

Her eyes itched.

She tasted metal.

One of her molars was still broken.

Her light was on. That was odd.

She stood from her bed and paused a moment to flush the pins-and-needles from her legs before stepping to her lightswitch and stopping short.

Her camera was looking at her from its spot on her shelf. That wasn't good at all.

Turning from the lightswitch, Max instead walked to the other side of the room where her camera was staring down at her. She glanced around for something to cover it with.

Her hamper was empty, and she needed her blanket. The camera was a bit too tall to fit in either of her drawers (she had tried before) which is why it lived on her shelf.

 _'Maybe under the bed with the rest of the_ _monsters?'_ Max idly considered, only half joking. 

Instead, she reached behind her and found the zipper of her dress. It took some fidgeting and a bit of wiggling but eventually she got the zipper down and then her dress was a little black puddle at her feet-

_like the rain on Tuesday_

-and from there it went into her hands along with the camera. Max wound the black dress around the Polaroid, careful to point the lens away from herself at all times, and when it was covered all the way she walked to the far corner of her room and dropped it behind some boxes she kept her extra clothes in.

As soon as she slid the top box over the dress and its contents she felt a palpable sort of relief wash over her.

'There. _Now_ I can turn the lights off.'

She smiled, enjoying how the plush carpet felt under her feet as she returned to the lightswitch and flicked it off triumphantly.

Again she reached behind herself, this time unhooking her bra, quickly pulling herself out of it and tossing the thing overhand into the empty hamper in the corner.

She pulled an oversized Joyce Manor tee shirt out of her top drawer and threw it on, then glanced tentatively towards her bed. She fidgeted, and instead stepped to the door.

 _'Soon, bed. Soon.'_ She thought.

She spared a moment to slide into her indoor shoes, an old pair of Chuck Taylor beaters-turned-slippers, and moved into the hallway.

No music from Victoria's room.

How considerate.

No light from under any of the doors, either. Perfect.

Max's canvas slippers tapped against her heels as she walked to the washroom.

The bathroom's motion-lights snapped on with a vague hum as the door swung inward and Max stepped onto the tile floor. She wasn't alone in the bathroom.

The door clicking shut snapped Victoria, barefoot and sans makeup, out of whatever fugue-state she was in and she jerked her head to look at Max.

Max could physically see the reflexive barb form on Victoria's half-pursed lips as her cheeks pulled up towards her eyes and her nose crinkled near her brow.

Victoria's first reaction was always to strike. Always.

Max had learned her way around Victoria, however. Mostly, at least. In conversations the blonde girl couldn't remember, mind, but she'd learned her way around her nonetheless.

"Hey." Max said. "Come here often?"

Victoria locked up immediately at Max's tone. Max heard the figurative gears grinding together inside Victoria's head as she smiled lightly at the blonde and turned on a sink.

After a couple of seconds that Max spent wetting her toothbrush, Victoria collected herself well enough to speak.

"What the fuck are you doing, Caulfield?" Victoria sneered.

Well, her tone sneered. Her expression said she was mostly confused.

Max glanced down at her toothpaste, back up to Victoria's face, and slowly put her toothbrush in her mouth.

Victoria scoffed to cover her flush.

"No shit, Lamefield. I meant your rinkydink outfit." Victoria said, like Max was particularly slow.

Max was mostly concentrating on brushing around her broken tooth, but spared the taller blonde most of a cocked eyebrow in response.

Victoria's mouth opened slightly and her brows knit together. She very visibly looked Max over from head to toe and back again before saying,

"You look like a fucking stereotype. Converse, pantyhose, and an oversized emo-kid tshirt at 2:30 in the morning? Really?"

Max wasn't wearing pantyhose-

She looked down.

A drop of toothpaste fell off her lip and onto the tile floor.

She was wearing pantyhose.

Max spit the toothpaste into the sink so she didn't have to look too hard at Victoria shaking her head and laughing silently to herself.

She didn't want to look at the dark red whorls in her toothpaste either though, so she split the difference and looked at Victoria's bare feet instead.

Why did Victoria's toenails look better than Max's fingernails? That didn't make any sense at all.

Why was Victoria barefoot in a mostly public bathroom for that matter?

Yeah. That one.

"You have more shoes than I have 'emo-kid' tees and you're barefoot in a public toilet, so I guess we're both making interesting choices right now." Max said, poking at her tooth with the tip of her tongue.

It wiggled.

She winced.

Victoria's lip morphed from a smirk to a full sneer over the course of Max's response before she froze and stepped forward firmly into Max's personal space, sparing a second as she did to glance into the basin of the sink.

She visibly recoiled. 

"Do you have a fucking gum disease, hipster?" Victoria said, her voice half condescension and half.. concern?

Max would have backed up but her butt was already hitting the sink and her genetics didn't give her too much extra wiggle-room in that department.

_'Thanks, mom.'_

Max's hand moved up to cover her mouth reflexively and she stammered out a quick "N-no.." but Victoria caught her hand before it got all the way there and suddenly there was another hand on her jaw.

 _'That's not how this was supposed to go at all-'_ Max thought, but then Victoria was speaking from very close to Max's face and suddenly Max wasn't the best at thinking anymore.

"I know you don't wear lipstick, so what the fuck is this?" Victoria said, only mostly snidely.

Max felt the pad of a thumb on her bottom lip and then a bit of pressure and warmth, but couldn't quite bring herself to push the taller girl away.

"Jesus _Christ_ , Max, did somebody kick you in the face?"

Actual concern was something Max had only ever heard in Victoria's voice once; but that was in a timeline a bit different from this one.

Max tried to fidget away but Victoria only doubled-down, this time stepping farther forward and physically pinning the smaller girl to the sink with a leg and some leverage.

The blonde's hand left Max's wrist and went to the ridge of her jaw instead, holding Max still while Victoria's other hand curved under her chin and the thumb on her lip slipped _in_ -

Max's toothbrush fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

' _.. what the hell?_ ' Max thought foggily, but all that actually came out of her mouth was a small, confused ".. ahh?"

Victoria suddenly stood stock still and her eyes snapped wide, but quickly regained her composure. Even after apparently realizing their current position, Victoria somehow still managed to come off haughty and self-assured.

"Don't get the wrong idea, Caulfield. My mom is an oral surgeon in Seattle and before I wanted to be a photographer, I wanted to be a dentist like her. That's all." Victoria said, confident enough for the both of them.

Victoria's grip then softened.

"Anyway, that tooth is cracked below the gumline and it's going to bleed every time you fuck with it until the gum heals over it or you get it pulled."

Victoria adjusted the hand that _wasn't_ partially inside Max's mouth and continued.

"Even _if_ it heals, it can still trap food or whatever else you shove in your little hipster mouth inside it and get infected, and then your face will fall off or something."

Max made a concerned noise in the back of her throat. She _liked_ her face.

Only then did Victoria seem to become fully aware of where her thumb was, and especially of the slippery pinkish sheen that now covered the end of it.

"Fuck's sake, Maxine- If I get hepatitis or something from this I'm suing you." She snatched her hands away from Max and recoiled like she had touched a hot iron. The shiver that ran through her while she said it just made it worse.

Max was almost too offended about the hepatitis remark to take issue with Victoria's abuse of her first name, but a glance down at her now-soiled toothbrush -as petty as it was- gave her the push she needed to respond in kind.

"You just watched me brush my teeth, _Vicky_." Max sniped back, smiling internally when Victoria visibly cringed at the shortening of her name.

 _'Karma.'_ Max thought before continuing, her pulse quickening.

"And hepatitis? The hell? I'm a lot more concerned with where your hand's been, Chase. With my luck it's probably best buddies with that stick you have _jammed up up your ass-_ "

Victoria's face flushed a deep red and she stepped towards Max again, opening her mouth to start on some verbal assault, but Max knew better.

Victoria Chase was a creature of momentum.

So she kept going.

"If anybody in this dorm has fucked around and caught something it's probably the girl that's spent the entire year climbing all the Vortex Club totem-poles she could get her hands on!" Max spat.

Victoria's retort died on her tongue as Max's words hit her. Victoria's teeth gnashed together and her lips pulled back in a literal snarl.

'That one's new..' Max thought. That had to mean she was doing something right, right?

She kept on, stepping towards Victoria so close their toes touched.

"The way Hayden tells it you're the highlight of the VIP room with enough vodka in you. Were him and the rest of the single guys on the football team not enough for you that you had to go after Zach, too?"

Max wasn't sure if she should know about that in this timeline, but judging by how Victoria had gone from embarrassed to actually shaking with fury in the last five or so seconds, Victoria was probably a bit too preoccupied to notice the slip.

She wasn't quite done yet, though.

"Is that it? Are football players your _thing_? And you call _me_ a stereotype? You're what would happen if someone made a Molly Ringwald blowup doll! Is that why you hung off Nathan-"

Max knew that was a mistake the instant it left her mouth, but at this point she didn't care.

It hit her about the same time Victoria's manicured fist did, too.

Victoria's punch landed squarely between Max's nose and chin and the brunette rocked back towards the row of sinks, half from the force of the swing and half from raw surprise.

Max's eyes tracked back to Victoria as she regained her balance and only just managed to bring her left arm up to absorb most of the wild followup swing Victoria sent towards her face. A glance towards her eyes was all Max needed to confirm the taller blonde girl was beyond furious now.

Max hardly had time to think before Victoria surged forward, an arm outstretched to grab Max by the hair, but the shorter girl ducked under the swipe and threw herself into Victoria's middle, intent to bowl the blonde over.

Victoria tried to carry the weight backward to catch and stop the brown-haired girl, but her foot caught on something hard and rounded _-the toothbrush-_ and in a moment she was on her ass, her back pushed against the divider of a shower stall and a bleeding brownish ball was in her lap with one hand around her neck and the other knotted in her short hair.

Max set her knees on either side of Victoria's hips and pressed the girl back and then _twisted_ , disrupting her enough that she turned sideways, taking her back off the divider and allowing Max to drive in from her core, forcing Victoria's shoulders and, after a moment, her head to the bathroom floor.

Victoria's face reddened as her fingers scrabbled at the wrist of the hand around her neck. She felt Max slide gradually up her chest until her knees were almost under the pits of Victoria's arms.

Victoria tried to dig her heels in to push herself out from under the girl on top of her, but she couldn't find purchase on the smooth tile floor.

She could feel her pulse throbbing in her ears as the grip on her throat tightened.

Max's fringe had fallen over her eyes and in the dim flicker of the fluorescent lights above them all Victoria could see was the split pinkish smears of Max's lips pulling back over the glinting red-slicked white of her teeth.

Even over the sound of her heartbeat Victoria could hear Max's teeth _grinding together_ -

-suddenly the force of Max's palms on her throat doubled-

-she couldn't breathe-

-Victoria's fingers clawed desperately at Max's face-

-her _eyes_ -

-a desperate sob wrenched its way out of her chest and died in her collapsed throat-

The weight on her neck vanished immediately and Victoria's chest seized involuntarily as it forced air into her lungs with a ragged gasp.

The starbursts in her vision hadn't yet cleared, but she could still see how Max had thrown herself backwards off of her and practically spidercrawled into the darkest, farthest corner of the bathroom under the sinks.

Victoria tried to take in a breath to speak with but it caught strangely in her throat and she coughed, violently and forcefully enough to draw her doubled around her belly on the floor. Instead, she exhaled slowly through her teeth and rode out the tremors that wracked her body as she fought to steady her breathing.

She never took her eyes off Max in the corner, trying her best to bury her head in her knees and drive herself further into the shadow under the sinks at the same time. Her hands were whiteknuckled in her hair and she _writhed_ every time Victoria's breath tangled audibly on its way out of her ragged throat.

With a heave and a hacking cough Victoria brought herself up onto her hands and knees and from there rocked back to sit on her ankles; one hand moving to rub at her bruising neck and the other to the floor at her knees to steady her.

Her hand went from massaging her throat upwards to try to clear the high-pitched noise in her ears but after a moment or two she realized it was coming from the corner Max was curled up in.

She was _keening_.

"Max.." she tried.

Not loud enough.

Her throat was too messed up.

She fell forwards onto her hands and knees and, against her better instincts, crawled towards the insensate girl in the corner under the sinks.

She got within a bit farther than arms reach and stopped before trying again, just in case.

"Max.." Victoria choked.

Max only withdrew further. Her shoulders shook.

Victoria swallowed the lump in her throat, and some of her fear with it.

"Caulfield, you rabid _bitch_.." she rasped.

".. are you going to murder me if I touch you?"

The messy brown mop _thrashed_ in response.

Victoria coughed to clear her throat, mentally steadied herself, and slid herself closer to the struggling brunette.

"Maxine.." she whispered, and did her best not to flinch when the girl tried to jerk away from the hand Victoria placed on her shoulder.

"Max.." Victoria whispered. "You're okay. _I'm_ okay."

Max wasn't making any noises other than the frankly terrifying keen from the back of her throat and occasionally a gasp for air muffled behind her knees, but Victoria's hand hadn't seemed to make anything _worse_ so..

She slid herself closer to the distraught girl so that their hips were touching in a way that they were both under the sink, but Max still had a path out if she freaked again.

Victoria kept whispering to Max under her breath out of equal parts propriety and bodily necessity for a few moments before steeling herself as another gut-deep sob wrenched through the brunette at her side.

Victoria said a short prayer to whoever was listening and shifted her hand from its spot on Max's near arm to across her narrow back and finally to rest on her opposite shoulder.

"Come here Maxine.." she whispered, and with an exhausted tug and a shift of weight she pulled the smaller girl into her lap.

Max didn't fight back.

Victoria adjusted herself so her back was pressed against the wall to support the extra weight on her hips and pulled her knees up to secure Maxine in place.

Her left hand moved from its spot on the point of Max's left shoulder for a moment and upwards into her hair, softly guiding the girl's head down and into the crook of Victoria's neck. From there Victoria spent a few seconds coaxing Maxine's bony knees out of her kidneys and carefully onto the shadowed tile on either side of Victoria's hips, and from there the brunette sagged -almost deflating- into Victoria's chest.

Her right hand found Max's closest wrist, fist still balled in her hair, and tugged her closer while her left hand around the girl's shoulders steadied her as she cried.

Victoria kept whispering softly into her mess of chestnut hair and gently rubbed slow circles across Max's clenched fists.

"Take your time, Maxine. I'm not going anywhere." Victoria said quietly. Max didn't give any indication of having heard her aside from a few shuddering and tearful hiccups, but after a minute or so more of steady coaxing Victoria finally felt Max's grip on her hair loosen underneath her own hold on Max's hands.

Slowly, carefully, Victoria guided Max's hands away from her scalp and somewhere behind her towards the small of her back, where they crisscrossed of their own accord underneath her own shoulders and found purchase in the dark silk of Victoria's nightgown.

Max began crying in earnest now, but the eerie, spine-freezing wail of a full breakdown was replaced gradually by the heavy and stuttering sobs of a more recognizably human ugly-cry.

Victoria readjusted her hold into something that felt a bit more natural. Her left hand came up to cradle the back of Max's head and softly massaged her sore scalp, combing through her tangled hair whenever she felt a knot. Her right hand slid down Max's back and then back up to rest on her side near her ribs, skin-to-skin.

In one sense it was worse, but in other ways better that Victoria was able to feel the smaller girl jerk and tense directly like this.

"Shhh.." she soothed."You're having a panic attack, but the worst of it's over now. Can you hear me, Max?"

Victoria felt the girl nod into her collar and her own spirits lifted a bit. The lights shut off automatically, but that didn't matter right then.

"Just focus on my breathing, Max. It's okay to keep crying for as long as you need to; just remember to keep breathing with me until you're finished, okay?" Victoria whispered into Max's hair.

A long, warm, shuddering exhale down the side of her neck was the only answer she received, but that was okay. Within a few moments Victoria could feel Max's ribs expand and contract in time with Victoria's own.

Victoria slowly brushed her hand up and down Max's side as the girl gradually pulled herself together.

"You're going to be okay." Victoria said, softly but firmly. "I'm not leaving you, Maxine."

For not the first time, Victoria thanked her lucky stars she had thought to get a book about how to help friends through trauma after Taylor told her about her mother's condition.

The next time Victoria exhaled a slow breath into Max's hair the smaller girl squeezed her and mumbled some things Victoria couldn't make out, but were definitely Max's first words in the last half hour or so.

"What was that, dork? You sound like you're speaking Mogwai down there." Victoria joked gently.

"-said'm'srry.." Max sniffed.

Oh Max was just a little murderous heartmelter now wasn't she?

"Don't sweat it too much, Max." Victoria murmured back. "This has been a complete bitch of a week for both of us."

Max made a noise that was either a sad cough or a weak laugh.

'She doesn't know the half of it..' Max thought.

Victoria went back to untangling Max's knotted hair.

"That doesn't make what you did not problematic, but I do understand the place it came from, at least." Victoria said, watching Max's dark silhouette as her night-vision developed slowly in the darkness of the bathroom.

The girl in her lap seemed to shrink inward and Victoria changed her hold again, this time dropping her left hand from Max's hair down to rest on her lower back. She then drew her right hand upwards to cup Max's chin in her palm and swiped her thumb slowly and carefully across Max's lips and cheek, mindful of the splits and welts and spots of tacky metallic moisture she could feel dappling the freckled girl's skin.

"Victoria.." Max murmured into the dark, softly enough the blonde girl had to tell more by the movement of the brunettes lips under her fingertips than by the sounds that reached her ears.

"I know." Victoria said, feeling warmth come to Max's cheeks as her damp and bruised skin shifted with the uncertainty of her new expression.

"I'm sorry too."

Max mumbled something Victoria couldn't make out as she pulled the smaller girl in for another reassuring hug.

Whatever Max had been meaning to say, she had forgotten it by the time a few minutes later she pushed back from Victoria's chest and settled her weight more on her own knees and less on the taller girl's hips.

It was about that time she remembered why she had come to the bathroom in the first place.

Max giggled for what felt like the first time in a week.

Victoria didn't care Max couldn't possibly see how she cocked her eyebrow or rocked back onto her palms in disbelief. The hipster could definitely hear her trademark scoff, and that's what really mattered.

"Just what the fuck could you _possibly_ be laughing about right now, dweeb?" Victoria jabbed with none of her usual venom.

Max giggled harder and then tensed, stopping short.

"I just remembered why I came here in the first place is all.."

She hadn't topped fidgeting.

Victoria caught on fast.

"Maxine, you've been digging your bony ass _directly_ into my bladder for God knows how long at this point. If you pee on me now, I swear I will feed you to that little tree you have in your room and they will never find you." Victoria growled.

Max started like a spooked animal and made to stand up, but Victoria pulled her back down before she could go very far.

Victoria heard Max inhale slowly from just above her.

"Watch the sink, dork." Victoria whispered gently, almost nose-to-nose with the freckled brunette.

"O-oh.." Max mumbled, "Yeah. Thanks.." she said, sliding out from underneath the string of sinks before righting herself this time, careful not to bang her head against anything hard and sharp on the way up.

As soon as the sensors detected Max stretching out as she stood up they flicked on with a snap, bathing the girls' bathroom in their flickering fluorescent glow.

Max flinched momentarily, but collected herself, reaching down and offering Victoria her hand up.

"Just don't pull too hard, y'know." Max said. "I can't be blamed if anything goes horribly wrong if you're the one that messes up, right?" She asked.

Victoria demurely accepted the offered hand and simpered in a faux-posh tone, "Ms. Caulfield, I'm sure I'm more than capable of blaming you for whatever irrational thing I please."

Max's laugh was soft, but it faded quickly when she pulled Victoria into the light and saw the twisting, knotted purple bruisework encircling Victoria's throat and the red bloom of the burst vessel in her left eye.

Max's stomach fell through the floor and her head spun precariously, but Victoria still had a hold on her hand and wouldn't let her fall.

The blonde stepped forward to steady her, green eyes flicking across her face in alarm, scanning and assessing a dozen different things in Max's expression before turning them both towards the mirror when she realized it was just Maxine being Maxine.

"It looks like you've ruined me, Caulfield." Victoria said dryly, leaning over the sink to get a good look at her eye and throat.

Max ducked her head again and mumbled an apology, unable to even look in Victoria's direction anymore.

The sound of two quick barefoot steps on tile announced Victoria's presence in front of her and suddenly a single index finger was pressing into the underside of her chin, forcing her gaze up and into a pair of mostly-green eyes.

Mostly-green eyes over a ludicrously smug grin.

"You should see the other guy." She said, positively bleeding confidence as she tilted Max's face towards the bathroom mirror.

Next to Victoria's face in the mirror was the reflection of someone that looked a little like Max.

They had the same eye and hair-color, but this girl's lips were a ruin. Three scratches dug parallel grooves from her left brow all the way to her jaw almost, and her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from all the tears. Dried blood crusted her chin and filmed over her front teeth (which were all still there, thank god) and her skin alternated between milk-white and blotchy red all over her neck and face.

She felt Victoria step away from her side to move behind her back and heard her say to turn on the sink as a sharp tearing noise and a muffled grumbling began to emanate from somewhere in Max's blind spot.

Half a minute passed while Max adjusted the temperature of the water before she felt a presence behind her and a hand on her hip.

She turned and found Victoria standing there as expected, but with her knee-length silk nightgown shorter by several inches.

"Here," the blonde said, "You can use these."

In her hand were several long strips of dark cloth.

"Oh, it's not a big deal Victoria.. I can just use some toilet paper, or my tee shirt-" Max trailed off at the glint in Victoria's eyes.

"Oh no Max, I insist. Use these while I get you some real supplies from my room." Victoria said, her tone allowing no space for argument.

"But your nightgown-" Max started, but was cut off.

"There will be others, Caulfield." Victoria said airily. "What matters is that I get back here with some disinfectant, and then and we can make sure nobody's face falls off." Victoria finished, a little too upbeat for what she was saying.

The mewling noise in the back of Max's throat was back again as she once more contemplated a faceless life.

Victoria's smug grin somehow intensified as she inclined her head.

"You're going to make it, Maxine. Trust me." Victoria said.

Her confidence was contagious. Max believed her.

"I'll be back in a minute, dork. Try to clean yourself up?" Victoria said rhetorically as she turned for the door.

Max answered anyway.

"Wait."

Victoria stopped and pivoted on a dime, and suddenly her undivided attention was on Max.

It felt heavy.

"Yes, Caulfield?" She said, curiosity beating out the urgency of getting to her first aid kit.

"Ah.." Max stammered, knotting her hands in her hair behind her head as she blushed.

'God I am such a cliche..' She thought, embarrassed, but continued when Victoria cocked her head to the side inquisitively.

"You're ahh.. actually _really_ good at this whole 'taking care of people thing, 'Tori.." Max trailed off, not able to keep looking at the tall blonde opposite her.

"Max.." she heard Victoria say, but Max kept speaking.

Confidence.

Momentum.

"I just really like this side of you is all."

There.

Max said it.

There was silence for a few moments and then Max heard bare feet on tile again.

She was still too embarrassed to look at the blonde directly, but she couldn't keep the small smile off her face as she stared at Victoria Chase's _immaculate_ toenail polish.

Victoria's willowy arms encircling her for the hundredth time that night was was a very welcome feeling, and the heavy sigh down the side of Max's neck sent.. _complicated_ tingles down through her core to the tips of her toes, but the weight in Victoria's words when she spoke brought Max up short.

"I'm.. not nearly as good at it as I could be, Maxine." Victoria swallowed a lump in her throat that Max could feel and the brunette's arms rose of their own accord to support the taller girl as she continued.

"I'm not even half as good at caring for other people as I should have been, Max.. There were more than enough signs, more than enough _chances_ , but.." Victoria trailed off as her voice broke and failed her.

"Fuck, Max. I'm.. _so sorry_.. I-"

Victoria's fingers pressed into Max's back almost desperately and Max felt something _raw_ escape the other girl as a hiss between clenched teeth, but Max never heard Victoria make so much as a sound of vulnerability of her own.

"I just.." Victoria collected herself, and pulled Max against her more evenly this time. When she spoke, her voice was unwavering.

"I owe it to a lot of people to be a better person than I was, Max." She leaned back, one arm dropping to Max's lower back in a way that felt positively electric to the brown-haired girl and the other moved around to her front, capturing her chin again.

Victoria guided Max's gaze up to meet hers with soft fingertips and a softer voice.

"Now Maxine.." Victoria began with the confident sort of smirk that Max thought suited her _so_ much better than her old, mean ones.

-god when did her eyes get so green-

"If you don't.."

-Max stood on the tips of her toes-

"Stop distracting me.."

-alllmosstt-

There.

Max rested her forehead against Victoria's and fought very hard to keep the blush off her cheeks.

"Shhh.." Max soothed, holding on tightly to Victoria, half for balance and half to keep her from trying to run away again.

"I believe you, 'Tori. It's going to be okay."

Victoria's eyes widened.

Max kissed her.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started as something to do to give a little bit back to the Chasefield clan while we wait for updates from the actual good writers. You know who you are. Keep doing your thing.
> 
> Chapter One of Explosive Decompression functions as a quasi-oneshot because I'm not very consistent as a writer. I needed to come to a natural stopping point right-off out of courtesy, in case what comes after is never truly finished. Above, there are more than enough threads established to continue on into a fuller story, but at its core the thesis is all here. If this were a "true" oneshot, less pagetime would have been spent on side characters and more on fleshing out Victoria's half of the equation, such as what she was doing staring into a bathroom mirror for so long the motion-sensitive lights turned off around her at two in the morning, for example.
> 
> Crossposted at ffn, so if formatting gets borked, we all know why.
> 
> That's for the future though. Please leave a review, please keep updating your own fics, and I'll see you again in a bit.
> 
> alt_


	2. Camp Adventure

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

2

* * *

**_TW: non-explicit onscreen sexual assault from "October 4th, 2013" to next linebreak._ **

* * *

**September 22nd 2013**

_'Nathan..'_

Victoria's fingertips dug into the fabric of her pullover and her teeth tugged thin strips of flesh off her lower lip.

She could hear a dozen voices below her enjoying the last sunset of summer but couldn't find it in her anywhere to move from her spot on her bed.

Nate had a gun.

She had noticed a change in his attitude the last week or so if she was was being generous, or since class had started if she wasn't.

He was.. different.. when they went to pick up party favors from Frank Bowers at the beach the night before last. More cocky. More brash.

The last time Nate had mouthed off at the scruffy dealer there had been a switchblade in the bearded man's hand and a hundred pounds of dog winding his way between their legs before she could blink.

Nate had frozen then.

This time he laughed.

On the way back to Blackwell, sitting in the passenger seat of Nathan's Mercedes, Victoria had questioned him about it. Nathan had laughed again; a thin, reedy sort of thing, and reached towards his waistband.

"Check it out, Vic. Sweet, huh?" He had said as he tossed the gun into her lap. A part of her tried to flinch away from it, like it was a bomb or a grenade or something. The rest of her realized there wasn't anywhere to go and caught it instead.

"What the fuck is this, Nathan?" She had said. It seemed like the appropriate response. "What do you need a gun for?"

Nathan took his eyes off the road and stared at her from under his creased brow in a way that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. He worked his jaw and exhaled through his nose before responding.

"It's a gift from _a friend_. I'm in the Major Leagues now, Vic. Major League means guns." He nodded at the pistol in her lap. "If Frank Bowers thinks I'm scared of him or his mutt dog he's got a surprise waiting for him."

He paused.

".. They all do." He said, half under his breath as he turned back to the road.

Victoria took her eyes off the gun and studied Nathan's face as he lapsed into one of his silences. They had been friends for long enough that she could read his face as well as she could his words, so long as he wasn't doped to the gills on his meds or his drug of the week from Frank.

The silence stretched as the black Mercedes SLS ate up miles of dark Arcadia backroads. The interior of the car was lit by the backwash of headlights and the LEDs of the console, but that was enough for Victoria to watch the theater of expression play across Nathan's face and hands as he lost himself in thought.

His tense shoulders and clenched fists around the steering wheel spoke of stress. Long-term and persistent if it was getting to him even now, so far away from anything resembling his normal life.

His father.

Fucking _Sean Prescott._

Nate's lips pursed and Victoria caught the beginnings of a sneer forming before something shifted up towards his eyes and the sneer became a smirk.

Nathan had a plan.

Nate _thought_ he had a plan.

Victoria looked at the gun in her lap and her stomach turned into a nervous knot.

"Nate, are you okay?" She said. She probably could have phrased it better, but Nathan wouldn't care. He preferred the blunt approach anyway.

His chest expanded like he had laughed, but he didn't actually make a sound.

"Never been better, Vic."

The smirk bloomed into a grin.

The gun in her lap seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

It made her sick.

"Nate, you know you can tell me anything. Fuck Frank Bowers, fuck Blackwell, and fuck Sean Prescott most of all. What's _wrong_ , Nate?"

Jesus Christ she was actually begging. Victoria Chase was begging a boy to open up to her over a lump in her throat in the passenger seat of his car. How much lower could she get?

Nathan didn't respond verbally. He just shifted into sixth gear and gunned the throttle.

The dashed marks in the center of the road bled into a solid line and Victoria was pressed back into her seat as the digital speedometer climbed ever higher.

Nathan's grin had become a sneer in the moments she hadn't been watching him.

That was the story of their entire relationship though, wasn't it?

The display hit 160 and Nathan took a hand off the wheel, casually reaching into her lap and taking back the gun.

Victoria's heart had joined the lump in her throat. Her pulse throbbed away in her ears. Nathan's expression had shifted into something she couldn't recognize anymore.

She looked away.

Her eyes stung.

She looked out the passenger window instead.

In the reflection, she saw Nathan smile as the speedometer crept higher.

Victoria closed her eyes.

She was back in her room. The last day of Summer was bleeding itself out onto the courtyard and everyone was basking in the last sprays of sunshine but her.

She pulled her curtains shut and fell back onto her bed with a tired sigh.

It was times like this that made her wish she could smoke.

She pulled her phone off the charger on her bedside table and checked her inbox.

3 unread to Nathan, sent this morning.

2 unread from Taylor, received about half an hour ago.

Fuck.

Victoria unlocked her phone with one hand and shifted onto her side.

Taylor was telling her that her mom had fallen suddenly that morning and was in the hospital in Portland. The scans hadn't come back yet, but..

_Fuck.._

Victoria pushed herself back upright and stood, grabbing one of her bags from under her bed as she did. The door opened and out she went into the hall, past the acoustic guitar trickling from underneath Caulfield's door.

"Camp Adventure" by Delta Sleep. She'd heard the hipster practicing this one all week.

Victoria definitely hadn't googled the lyrics she'd heard Caulfield softly signing to herself the first time she'd heard them.

Of fucking _c_ _ourse_ the little brown waif could play music, too. She was good at everything else. It only made sense.

She turned away from her spot in front of Max's door and moved to Taylor's room. She opened the door without knocking and stepped inside.

Taylor was leaning over her stereo fiddling with a pair of knobs before standing and turning towards Victoria. She was suspiciously not wearing makeup, but the red skin around her eyes and inflamed cheeks told all the story Victoria needed to see.

"Come here Sweet-T." she said, stepping towards her friend and spreading her arms.

Taylor gasped out something that was half a sob and half a laugh as she stepped towards Victoria and rested her chin on her shoulder.

"You know I think that's a dumb nickname, Victoria." Taylor exhaled. Victoria could hear the smile in her voice though. That's what counted.

"It's the good kind of dumb though." Victoria said as she let her friend go and stepped away, but not far enough she couldn't grab one of Taylor's hands and pull her towards the bed.

"Sit." She commanded, with none of the venom her demands usually held.

Victoria walked across the room to Taylor's mini-fridge and found a bottle of orange juice along with a tray of ice, then pulled a pair of glasses from the second drawer from the bottom of Taylor's desk. A few cubes of ice and a splash of juice dropped into the glasses with a clink and Victoria turned back to Taylor and the bed she sat on.

"Are we talking about the news you got today, or the party the week-after-next?" Victoria asked as she passed the second glass to the blonde on the bed.

Taylor swirled the ice in her glass around as she considered it, her eyes on the floor. She pulled one of her legs up to rest on the bed and leaned back onto an elbow as she spoke.

"Maybe after a drink or two first.." She trailed off, before her face lit up and she was suddenly upright again. Victoria quirked an eyebrow in response as she twisted the cap off of a bottle of vodka.

"Yes, minion?" She asked.

"I know something you don't know." Taylor said, playing with the last syllable with her tongue.

Victoria's other eyebrow rose and she inclined her head.

"That _is_ your job, Taylor." She said while she poured the vodka into her own glass. "So spill for me like a good girl and I'll give you something nice." Victoria smiled and took a sip.

"Alcohol first. This is a good one, I promise." Taylor was positively bouncing in her seat. She held out her glass.

Victoria walked towards her and didn't stop until she hit the side of the bed. 'Personal boundaries' were always more like guidelines to Victoria Chase, for friends and foes alike. She stared down at Taylor and started to tip the bottle over into the other blonde's glass before thinking better of it.

Taylor whimpered as Victoria brought the bottle to her own lips with the smuggest expression on her face.

"Talk." She said, and began to drink.

"Kate Marsh is coming to the party the week after next!" Taylor blurted out, reaching for the bottle before Victoria could drink too much of it, or worse, drop it entirely.

Victoria spluttered in surprise and then cringed as the liquor shot into her sinuses.

"Fuck!" She winced, quickly handing the bottle off to Taylor so she could clear her nose.

Taylor smiled as if she had planned the entire exchange and spoke as she poured her own drink. "You heard me, Victoria. Kate Marsh is coming to our next party. Apparently Courtney was able to convince her to give it a shot _somehow_."

Victoria wiped her mouth and spun Taylor's desk chair around so she could throw her arms across the backrest and leaned forwards, eyes wide.

"How the hell'd she manage that?" Victoria asked.

Taylor shrugged. "No idea." She answered. "Maybe Kate just wants to get out of her shell?"

Victoria's lips pursed around the rim of her glass. "I don't buy it." She said plainly after a moment of consideration. "Bitch spends all of August crawling up everyone's collective ass about 'muh Jesus' and 'preserving your purity against temptation' and suddenly she wants to hang out at a Vortex party? No way." Victoria finished her glass and spun herself around in her chair.

"You sure she's not going to, I don't know, wear a wire or something? Get everything shut down like Nathan's dad doesn't own the cops here?" Victoria said, then winced.

Nate.

Fuck.

She refilled her glass and downed it.

Taylor's eyebrows rose, but she said nothing of it.

"Doubt it." Taylor said. "From what Court' said, she was pretty into the idea. 'Just to socialize' is how Courtney said she'd put it, but that's still out of character for Saint Marsh, don't you think?"

Victoria nodded. The room spun a little. The alcohol was hitting her.

"The next thing you know Caulfield'll be knocking down our doors trying to get in." Victoria said, resting her chin on the back of her arms.

Taylor smirked. "Oh yeah?" She said, refilling her glass with just orange juice.

"Mhmm.." Victoria replied. "Can you imagine her showing up to the VIP lounge in one of her little hipster animal shirts or something?" She laughed snidely and twirled her toes in the carpet.

"It's a wonder she's allowed to dress herself at all.." Victoria trailed off as she poured another shot.

Taylor leaned back, considering.

"She could get Kate to dress her, honestly." Taylor said, eyes flashing a bit as she caught the makings of a snarl on Victoria's face. "I think she'd look cute in one of Kate's church dresses. Maybe a nice necklace or some showy earrings to liven her top half up? Kate's got a lot of those, right?"

"Fuck that." Victoria positively _growled_. Taylor had struck gold.

She smiled, catlike. "Oh?" Taylor asked. "How'd you do it then?" She sing-songed innocently.

Victoria met her eyes for a second before looking down towards the floor.

Taylor followed her sightline down towards her fidgeting toes.

_Oh shit.._

"She'd definitely look best in something dark and form-fitting, but not too overstated." Victoria pondered aloud. "Something that cuts off above the knee, but only just. A couple inches of heel to highlight her legs more, too."

Victoria laid her head down on her arms fully and kept speaking.

"Too much makeup and you'd cover her freckles.." Victoria's eyes fluttered shut and her cheeks flushed, not entirely from the alcohol.

 _'Oh man.._ ' Taylor thought. She had a suspicion.

"Caulfield has freckles?" She probed, baiting.

"Mhmm." Victoria mumbled, finishing her own drink and setting the glass on the table with a rattle. "From her cheeks to her shoulders.."

That was definitely a blush.

This explained.. a lot, actually.

Taylor smiled mischievously. "So. Little black dress and some heels. Maybe some eyeliner. What else, V? Maybe one of Kate's cute little cardigans?" This was almost unfair.

Victoria _growled_ again as her figurative hackles raised.

' _This is priceless'_ Taylor thought as she swallowed.

 _'Fuck Kate.'_ Victoria grumbled. "I've got plenty of cardigans in my closet too. One of those, and maybe a black lace choker.." Victoria smiled into her arms at the thought.

Taylor's eyebrows climbed towards her hairline.

This explained a _whole_ lot.

"Geeze V, was Wednesday Addams your first crush or something?" Taylor questioned as she set her empty glass down and stretched out on her bed.

"Morticia, actually. Wednesday was cute too though." Victoria answered with a slow smile.

Then her eyes shot open, quickly finding Taylor's over her own wide grin.

"Tell no one." Victoria demanded.

Taylor mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key.

"Gomez had his charms too, I suppose." Victoria admitted, spinning in her chair again. "But there was something about Anjelica Huston's Morticia that I latched on to."

Victoria stood and walked to the bed, uncharacteristically flopping down across Taylor's legs as she settled in.

"I guess I hadn't really been exposed to a woman as matriarchal and in-control as Morticia was. I'd definitely seen authoritative women in movies before, but never one that was powerful _and_ sensual, you know?" Victoria pondered rhetorically.

Victoria couldn't see it, but Taylor nodded nonetheless.

"Not that strong and feminine women didn't exist before then, of course." She admitted. "I just hadn't seen them."

Taylor's hand crept into Victoria's hair as the taller, drunker blonde wiggled across her legs to put her back against the wall.

"Who was your first crush, Sweet T?" Victoria mumbled.

Taylor answered immediately.

"My dad was watching _Fight Club_ and I remember I was walking through the living room long enough to discover Brad Pitt with his shirt off."

She heard Victoria groan from somewhere below her and smiled.

"You too, huh?" Taylor said.

"Mhmm." Victoria answered. "I couldn't decide between him or Helena Bonham Carter. I'd be fine with either."

A comfortable silence settled between them for a few minutes. Taylor filled the quiet time by running her fingers through Victoria's hair as she felt the taller blonde relax at her side.

"My biggest-" Victoria yawned. ".. fuck. My biggest childhood crush though was definitely Winona Ryder. I didn't see "Beetlejuice" until I was 12, but it changed my life." Victoria laughed quietly, climbing up the bed and molding herself into Taylor's back.

Taylor giggled. Victoria was a cute drunk.

"Did you know she's only 5 foot 3?" Victoria asked into Taylor's hair.

Taylor did not, but she _did_ notice a pattern when she saw one.

"Got a thing for short girls, V?" She asked with a knowing grin.

"Absolutely." Victoria answered back quietly but confidently.

A soft moment passed.

".. T, you won't tell anyone I'm bi, right?" Victoria asked, somewhat less confidently.

Taylor clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head. ' _This girl.._ ' she though.

"No, Victoria, I won't out you to the Blackwell randos. You'd murder me publicly and that'd fuck with my plans this weekend."

Victoria laughed at that and squeezed Taylor's hand.

"I'd make it quick for you at least. A clean death, better than you deserve." Victoria said dramatically, tracing a line across Taylor's throat with a drunken flourish.

"I won't tell everyone you're an anime fiend either, V. Your secrets are safe with me." Taylor said, smiling softly as she felt Victoria freeze behind her.

"It's not that obvious, is it?" She asked after a moment. Taylor could _hear_ the blush in her tone.

"No, Victoria. I honestly wouldn't have any idea if I hadn't seen your bookmarks tab-"

-"You went through my fucking bookmarks!?"

"-while looking for birthday present ideas-"

-"You nosy _bitch!_ "-

"-and was surprised at all the Sailor Moon fanfiction you read is all."

She felt Victoria go still and silent behind her.

"I love you, V?" Taylor asked, only moderately spooked.

Victoria still hadn't moved.

Taylor knew Victoria's body language. She knew 'mortified _'_ when she felt it.

"If it's worth anything at all, I think you'd pull off that cosplay you have saved on Amazon."

Victoria shifted.

".. Really?" She asked.

Taylor nodded.

"Definitely. You've totally got the legs for it. You'd look great."

".. Thanks, T."

Taylor smiled and sighed. "Y'know, what if we did a costume party for Halloween?" Taylor asked guilelessly.

"I am not outing myself as a weeaboo in front the Vortex sharktank, Taylor." Victoria grumbled.

"Just say I said you could pick my costume if you let me pick yours, or that you lost a bet or something." Taylor offered. "You'd look amazing and nobody'd care anyway, V."

Victoria exhaled a long breath into Taylor's hair.

".. Maybe." She replied.

' _Yes_!' Taylor shouted internally.

"You're a really good friend, Taylor." Victoria said quietly from above her.

Taylor blushed. Victoria was a _sappy_ drunk.

"'m sorry I'm bitchy every now and then-"

' _Maybe a bit more than every now and then, V.._ ' Taylor thought

"- but it just slips out sometimes, even with friends. I don't mean it, though."

Victoria squeezed her a little.

"Not with you and Courtney at least. Nate either.." She trailed off.

Taylor started to respond, but Victoria kept talking.

"I'll drive you out to visit your mom after class tomorrow, Sweet T."

A stronger squeeze this time. Victoria didn't let go.

Taylor pursed her lips and felt her eyes start to sting.

"It's all the way in Portland, Victoria. Are you sure?" Taylor asked.

"Absolutely, Sweet T. It's less than 2 hours away anyway. No sweat." Victoria said, voice firm even through the spin of the alcohol. "We can get something nice to eat on the way back too if you feel like it. My treat."

Taylor laughed, despite how understated a thing it was. It was better than crying.

"Your _dad's_ treat, you mean." Taylor jabbed.

"The Chase Family watches over their own, peasant." Victoria said in an absolutely abysmal posh English accent.

Then they were both laughing.

The laughter faded into another comfortable silence.

The sun had set a while ago and the hallway was thick with the sounds of excited girls coming back indoors when Taylor turned over in Victoria's arms.

"Wanna sleep in here tonight? We can finish off that vodka and get started organizing the costume party.." Taylor wiggled her eyebrows suggestively as she trailed off.

Victoria's eyes rolled as she considered the idea. After a moment, she spoke.

"That sounds.. doable, minion." She said, imperiously. Then she smiled. "I pick what we get delivered to eat, though." She said with a firm nod.

"Deal!" Taylor quickly agreed. She sat up quickly and then stood, heading towards her closet and grabbing a towel.

"I'm gonna shower before these hoes steal all the hot water. Keep my spot warm for me?" She asked.

Victoria rolled into the center of the bed and stretched.

"It's my spot now, but yes I'll keep it warm." Victoria responded. That smug expression was back with a vengeance.

"I'll be right back then, V." Taylor said cheerily as she stepped out the door.

Victoria exhaled as she wiggled down into the blankets.

' _This was nice.._ 'She thought as she drifted off.

* * *

**October 1st 2013**

Victoria heard a door open as she stepped out into the hallway towards the shower.

It was _Fucking Caulfield,_ because _of-fucking-course_ it was.

She was framed in her doorway in bunny ears and some kind of pale dress. She had whiskers drawn on her cheeks in eyeliner and her freckles only made them stand out more. The tip of her nose was colored a pale pink. One of her hands held her guitar case and in the other was her fucking pet tree with its pot held in some kind of multicolored tophat.

Victoria stopped dead in her tracks.

Caulfield did too.

Victoria took a half step back and reached to her left. She always kept her camera next to the door.

Caulfield saw what Victoria had reached for and immediately reddened. Victoria reflexively brought her camera up, framed her subject, found her focus, and shot.

The quiet _snap_ seemed to echo down the empty hallway.

All the blood that had rushed to Caulfield's face drained away and now she looked absolutely ashen, but Victoria simply made a show of looking the brunette up and down and gestured down the hallway.

"Well then, Lamefield? Toddle on." Victoria commanded.

Caulfield snapped back to herself and quickly made her way past Victoria - _'Dear lord she has a bunny tail too'_ \- and to her destination. Victoria's own blush faded as quickly as it came.

Now her blood _boiled_.

_Kate's room._

Max knocked on the door softly while looking down both ends of the hallway and after a moment _Kate_ opened the door wearing a mouse-ear hairband and her own drawn on whiskers. The door was opened wide enough that Victoria could see into the room past the two hugging girls, decorated with streamers and a full tea set on display on the little table in the center of Kate's room.

Right behind _Kate_ on the floor was her _little fucking rabbit_ in what looked like a _little fucking blue and white tea-cozy-turned-dress_.

They were having an _Alice in Wonderland_ -themed tea party for Halloween, several weeks early so Kate didn't have to do the whole "pagan witchcraft _"_ thing.

How _absolutely fucking perfect_.

Max released _Kate_ from the hug and stepped into her room. The last thing Victoria saw before the door closed were Kate's narrowed eyes.

Victoria seethed.

' _Fuck!_ ' Victoria threw her camera at her bed and didn't wince as it bounced off and clattered against the wall and then the floor.

Her fingernails bit raw crescents into her palms as she stormed towards the showers.

If anyone asked why a pair of thuds echoed out of her stall as soon as the spray turned on, well, no one could say she hadn't dropped her shampoo.

No one saw the torn skin on her left knuckleridge, after all.

No one saw the pinkish spiral sliding down the drain.

Absolutely no one saw the tears of pure _hatred_ that pooled in her eyes but didn't fall, either.

* * *

**October 4th, 2013**

The music boomed loudly enough her teeth shook, but she was too drunk to care. Taylor was off somewhere with one of the Bigfoots, Courtney was trying her best to shake some rando off because he smelled too much like weed at the moment, and Nate was behind the bar.

All of that was fine, _because of what was in front of her._

A Cheshire smile slid its way between her nose and chin at what she was seeing.

At what her _camera_ was seeing.

At what _everyone_ would see by tomorrow morning.

Who knew innocent little Kate Marsh had it in her?

Definitely not Logan.

Or Zach.

Or Hayden.

Or Devin or Tyler or Donovan either.

Kate didn't seem to care. She flitted between them like a little scarlet hummingbird looking for nectar wherever she could find it. Right now she seemed to think it was down Hayden's throat.

Victoria laughed. This was perfect. This was a fucking gift from above.

Hayden traced a drunken trail down Kate's neck and the slut pulled him closer and _moaned_ , her eyes screwed shut and her swollen lips parted in a perfect 'oh'.

There it is. The thumbnail. Perfect.

She slid the focus back, revealing Hayden's hand visibly squeezing her ass through her skirt as Logan stepped into frame, pulling one of her hands off of Hayden's head and bringing it to rest on his chest as he leaned in and kissed her. Her arms wrapped around Logan's neck and she gyrated in Hayden's lap.

This was beautiful.

Victoria got one more long, panning shot before killing the footage and slipping away upstairs.

Rando Bigfoot could go home and handle his problem elsewhere. She needed Taylor _now_.

The first room was empty. The second was in-use, but not by who she needed. The third-

Bingo.

Taylor sat primly at the head of the bed, a large blanket obscuring her lower half. A large blanket, and a human sized lump. Taylor's face was flushed, and neither of her hands were in view.

She could deal. This was important.

Victoria's hand slipped under the blanket, found a waistband, and jerked.

The football team's kicker spilled out from under the blanket with a glazed look in his eyes and saliva around his mouth.

His eyes squinted in confusion and his mouth opened to say something but Victoria cut him off immediately.

"I'm sure you were doing your best, but now the grownups need to talk. You may go now."

Victoria gestured towards the door.

He tried to say something else but was cut off again.

" _I_ _said you were dismissed_." Victoria hissed, her voice cracking like old ice and her expression even colder.

The boy swallowed and made his exit, closing the door behind him.

Taylor looked at Victoria with a mixture of anger and confusion on her face, but Victoria's grin was fucking _predatory_ and brought her up short.

"What's going on V? The house better be on fire because-"

Victoria cut her off.

"Look." She said simply, a smug smile on her face as she tossed the camera onto the bed next to Taylor.

Taylor reset the video to the start and pressed play.

Her jaw dropped.

"Oh no fucking way.." She trailed off.

The smile that carved itself across Victoria's face was vile enough she could fucking taste it but she didn't care.

"Mhmm. Who could have guessed prim and proper Kate Marsh was just waiting for her chance to bloom into a little scarlet flower?" Victoria's words were acid.

"Victoria, something isn't right here." Taylor said after a moment and Victoria's expression shifted.

"You'd think, but this is all her. I've been watching her." Victoria's eyes darkened.

"She drank one glass of wine." She said. " _One_. After that it's been nothing but water. Nathan was handing them out himself."

Taylor's eyebrows knit together in confusion.

"That," Victoria said, indicated the video playing back on the camera, "is absolutely _not_ because of the alcohol." Victoria laughed, and Taylor's stomach churned.

"You sure, V?" She asked, voice heavy with trepidation. "If you told me this was Kate's evil twin I'd have believed it before thinking she'd do something like.. this.. so suddenly."

Taylor chewed her lip as she passed the camera back to Victoria.

"You think I'd stand by and watch a pack of dudebros just rape a girl, even if I fucking hated her?" Victoria asked, shaking the camera as she gestured towards the screen.

Taylor spoke to the negative but Victoria continued on

"I was watching her like a _hawk_ , Taylor. One glass of wine that Nathan poured himself from a bottle that had only ever been behind the bar. The rest were bottles of water from the cases behind the bar, too." Victoria explained as her smile solidified.

"There is absolutely _no way_ that she was drunk here. Which means that this is the real Kate Marsh. Which means she can't hide behind her bible when she gets fucking _crucified_ -"

"Victoria. Please." Taylor said. "I get it. Post the video."

Victoria's smile was positively _sublime_ as she transferred the video from her camera to her phone.

"Gladly."

* * *

**October 7th, 2013**

Taylor popped her lips and Victoria turned away from watching _F_ _ucking Caulfield_ sleep to see what Taylor wanted. The other blonde gestured from across the table at a piece of paper in front of her while Mr. Jefferson went on about Alfred Hitchcock.

_"Dear Kate,_

_We love your porn video_

_XOXO Blackwell Academy"_

Victoria didn't smile so much as she showed her teeth.

Perfect.

She looked back up to Taylor to show her approval and heard a gasp to her right as Max jerked awake like she had been shocked.

She looked _terrified_.

Caulfield glanced rapidly in every direction as if she had no idea where she was and Victoria tilted her head, ready to open her mouth to get the mousy brunette's attention when a paper ball flew overhead and struck Kate Marsh in the face.

Victoria couldn't bring herself to pay attention.

Max looked _shattered_. What the fuck was going on?

Victoria's phone buzzed back on the table, but that wasn't important. It wasn't Nate's tone and everyone else important was already in the room.

Mr. Jefferson turned and asked the class about a photographer that captured the human condition in black and white and circled the room looking for answers.

Victoria exhaled in frustration when nobody answered and raised her hand, offering up the "Diane Arbus, Mr. Jefferson" he was looking for to continue his lecture before turning back to Max.

Victoria turned just in time to see Max raise her camera to her face and snap a shot.

Her hands were shaking.

Mr. Jefferson cut himself off mid-sentence and turned back to Max, lectured her for taking a selfie in class, and then transitioned into a question about the technical term for the "process that codified photographic self-portraiture."

Max's eyes never left the tabletop.

Victoria raised her hand again, but Max looked up and her expression hardened.

"The Daguerreian Process, Mr. Jefferson." She said plainly. "I don't feel well. May I please go to the bathroom?" She asked.

Mr. Jefferson leaned back onto the table behind him with a smirk on his face, sitting half on his hands.

"Excellent work, Max. That's exactly right-"

Max cut him off.

"I don't feel well Mr. Jefferson. May I please go to the bathroom?" Max repeated, her voice perfectly flat.

A trickle of blood slid from her nose, across her lips, and down to the point of her chin.

'Jesus _fuck_.'

Mr. Jefferson opened his mouth and quickly shut it. He closed his eyes and gestured towards the door.

"You're excused, Ms. Caulfield. Don't forget about your Everyday Heroes submission- I'm expecting great things from you." He said, but she had grabbed her things and was out the door before he finished.

She had only paused long enough to whisper some kind words to Kate.

Mr. Jefferson returned his attention back to the class and segued into progress reports on everyone's projects. Victoria checked her bag one last time for her portfolio before pulling the folder out and laying it on her desk.

A minute later Mr. Jefferson dismissed the class and Victoria stood to make her way to the front of the room to turn in her submission. Taylor blew her an exaggerated kiss before overdramatically strutting towards the door.

The moment Taylor opened the door there was a pop like someone dropped a heavy book on the floor, but had somehow echoed from farther down the hall towards the front of the school.

Taylor glanced back into the classroom in confusion and Mr. Jefferson quickly went back to critiquing Victoria's framing technique, having looked up with his expression oddly blank at the noise.

Victoria leaned back over the desk to respond to Mr. Jefferson's critique when she heard the intercom crackle to life.

A chill passed through her at the urgent tone of the voice on the other side of the PA.

" _Code Blue. Code Blue. All students and faculty immediately clear the halls and move to the nearest classroom. Faculty please secure all doors and cover all windows. Do not move from your positions until the all clear is given. I repeat, Code Blue. Code Blue-_ "

There was an active shooter in the school.

Her eyes flicked to the phone in her purse.

The phone that had six unread texts and three missed calls to the first number in her contacts list.

To the boy that hadn't talked to her in two weeks.

' _Nathan.._ '

* * *

**October 11th, 2013**

It was too sunny for a funeral.

* * *

**October 12th, 2013**

Victoria laid on her bed, eyes boring holes in the digital display of the clock on her nightstand.

1:30 AM.

She'd been here, on top of her blankets in the dark, since 9.

She couldn't think.

She couldn't breathe, either.

That was okay.

She sent a quick text to 'Sweet T' and after making sure the checkmark indicating the message had been read didn't pop up, she reached into her bedside table and grabbed what she needed, stuffed it into her shower bag, and walked to the bathroom.

No twinkly guitar trickling sweetly out of Maxine's room. No soft voice singing sad love songs either. That was fortunate.

No lights under any of the other doors.

Perfect.

The motion-sensitive overheads in the bathroom snapped on with an anemic thrum and their flicker cast odd shadows into the space under the sinks. One of the fluorescent bulbs had gone out, and another had one foot in the grave.

Appropriate. Victoria laughed.

She checked the bathroom to make sure she was alone and mechanically dropped her bag inside the lip of her usual shower stall. She returned to the sinks, picked one at random, and turned it on. She watched the water slip down the dappled drain in a daze.

She was tired, but couldn't sleep.

That was unfortunate.

Steam began to carry upward in a warm, misty cloud and Victoria wet a washcloth in the scalding stream.

It stung, but that was almost the point.

Layer by layer, she peeled the makeup away until there was nothing left but her.

She swallowed something heavy in her throat and looked up.

There was still one more layer to go.

She wiped away the steam and finally looked at the monster in the mirror.

She thought of Nathan.

Her first concrete sign had been the gun he literally threw into her lap, but there had been others. Less obvious, but nonetheless _real_.

She had just been fucking blind.

She heard the joints in her fingers creak in protest of her grip on the edge of the sink but she couldn't actually feel them pop and shift under the strain.

She let go anyway. She needed her hands.

She laughed again.

All she ever had to do was go to someone - _anyone-_ and tell them that something was fucking wrong with Nate.

She tried to look away from the face across from her but found she couldn't. Something cold and sharp like arrowflint in the expression opposite her own held her transfixed.

Her eyes were like glass. Green like a cats-eye marble and equally human.

Equally alive.

Alive like the Price girl was.

Alive like _Kate_ would have been if Max hadn't found the note in time.

Victoria's eyes _burned_. The face across from her twisted into an unholy sneer. The disgust was almost palpable.

Kate Marsh had been _violated_ and Victoria had held the fucking camera and _smiled_. Taylor had _told her_ something was wrong but Victoria had been _so sure_ and _so eager_ to finally have a victory over the perfect little church girl that she kept going. Kept pushing until something broke.

Kate had hugged her at the funeral and said _she_ was sorry.

Something had broken alright.

The face in the mirror made her _sick_.

She thought to the bag in the shower and would have smiled -would have _screamed_ \- if she could move her mouth.

She was trembling. She was fucking shaking, but none of the fury made its way to her face.

The face in the mirror stared back, looking just as dead as she felt.

' _Good_.' She thought as the automatic lights shut off, thinking there was no one left in the bathroom.

They were half right.

In the darkness, freed from the paralysis the monster in the mirror had stricken her with, Victoria Chase smiled.

The fire in her eyes came to a head and something hot slid down her cheeks.

It felt like hate.

It tasted like salt.

The water kept whirling into the dark drain and Victoria slowly relaxed, imagining the warm stream taking her hesitation with it on its way out to sea.

She felt light. She felt like she was tied to the earth by a string leading back to the bag in the shower.

One cut and she'd float away. Like a kite in the breeze.

She smiled.

* * *

The bathroom door groaned open and the lights snapped on with a dull hum as someone stepped onto the tile.

Victoria turned her head like she was waking from a dream.

A reflexive barb formed on the tip of her tongue (Seriously what the fuck was this girl wearing?) but Caulfield just smiled tiredly and opened her big dumb mouth.

"Hey." She said, walking to the sink next to Victoria. "Come here often?"

Victoria felt life spill back into her limbs. She could worry about the girl in the mirror after she'd fed this _dorky little hipster_ her own ass.

"What the fuck are you doing, Caulfield?" Victoria said, turning away from the mirror to face the freckled girl fully.

Max looked down at her toothbrush and then back at Victoria with a confused expression on her face. She punctuated her unspoken sentence with the rustle of bristles on teeth.

'That little _smartass_.. ' Victoria thought as heat flooded into her cheeks and her pulse picked up for the first time in days.

She scoffed to cover her flustered blush.

As she opened her mouth to vent even a fraction more of the frustration _Max Fucking Caulfield_ stirred up inside her apparently just by existing, Victoria wondered if this couldn't be what normal felt like.

If it was, she didn't think she'd be able to bring herself to float away any time soon.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2. Hopefully this solidifies that Victoria isn't some incredibly strong emotionally flawless Mary Sue or is suddenly whitewashed. Poor girl has problems. Two doozies back to back is pretty nasty, but I promise it's generally an upward trend from here, mainly because I can't stand bullying Kate.
> 
> Apparently reviews and PMs are my drug of choice, so keep those coming. 
> 
> Chapter 3 soonish. It'll be chronologically after Ch. 1 since we're all caught up now, so yeah. Consequences.
> 
> Anyway, love y'all.
> 
> alt_


	3. In Circles

* * *

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

3

* * *

Despite the firm chill of the floor under her toes, Max felt as though she had stepped off a cliff and into open air.

Air that smelled like lavender and sweat, and tasted like cinnamon and old blood.

She was in freefall.

Ten little pinpricks of heat across her back; thin like fingertips (because, as she vaguely remembered, _that's what they were_ ), burned through the thin cotton of her shirt and lit across her skin in a way that only made the rest of her feel colder for their absence.

She felt herself lurch forward, unsteady. Uncertain.

She felt something on her lips; warm and soft, but above all _cautious_ in the way it ( _'they'_ , she realized, _'those were lips too'_ ) pressed against her own.

_Hesitation._

_Rejection._

They pulled away.

' _Oh, God..'_ , she thought while the floor dropped out from underneath her feet and took the pit of her stomach with it, leaving her hanging-

-gutless-

- _breathless_ -

-in the mouth of the void.

And then something soft touched her cheek.

At once the ten tiny pinpricks she felt against her skin _ignited_ as she was pulled, forward and up, drawn into the curve of something warm and firm and suddenly the lack of solid ground beneath her didn't matter at all because Victoria's fingertips traced _fire_ down the slender slope of her spine and up to the crown of her head, raising hair and goosebumps and _need_ in their wake.

 _'Oh..'_ She thought hazily as her mouth fell open on its own. Victoria's furtive hold on her shifted into something solid and secure enough that she could feel the blonde's heart -steady and slow- beating against her chest and pulsing over the split skin of her lips.

She became acutely aware of her own flyaway heartbeat only by the contrast of the girl across from her, strong and relentless and something like glacial in the way she moved against her. The way a hand crawled into her hair; fingers, long and soft and unyielding, splayed against her scalp and cast little hot star-bursts into her head. The other hand carved a river of heat across the small of her back on its way to settle skin-to-skin and almost molten on her hip.

Something _volcanic_ lapped against her lip. A gasp would have escaped her at the sudden sting of it if Victoria hadn't captured it along with the rest of her.

She felt the slick ridge of teeth rasp against raw flesh and a whimper died before it could fully form as the pain was replaced by the warm envelope of Victoria's mouth on hers again.

Max's eyes, heavy and hooded, slid open and she was trapped.

She'd never seen green fire before.

Victoria pulled away with a hiss that made something in her belly _writhe_ at the sound of it. Max's eyes flicked from Victoria's dilated pupils to the mottled knots around her pale throat to the faint sheen of red smeared across her lips and something possessive and _primal_ thrashed awake inside of her.

Marking Victoria felt _good_.

Her tongue danced inside her mouth like a hungry flame.

She was _starving._

The slick cinnamon sheen she could still taste on her lips only fueled her searching surge forward and up back towards Victoria's warmth.

Max's forehead brushed against the taller blonde's own as she canted her head downward to meet the brunette somewhere in the middle-space between them, but at the last moment shifted so that Max's torn lips slid and streaked a path along Victoria's delicate jaw and down into the crook of her neck.

 _'Max..'_ Victoria hissed from somewhere above her, voice raw and heavy and _charged_.

It sent an electric jolt into Max's spine, sharp and hot like lighting.

Her mind clouded and her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Something feral worked its way out of her as a mewl at Victoria's tone.

She'd give anything to hear her name on those lips again.

Her tongue flicked out and found the soft skin of Victoria's neck and her teeth followed behind it.

 _'Bite'_ Something inside her said.

_'Claim-'_

Her lips sealed over bruised skin and her teeth slid together, taking as much of Victoria into her mouth as she could-

 _"Max."_ Victoria gasped, and this time there was an urgency in her tone that wasn't present before.

"Max, we need to stop." Victoria panted, and a part of Max -the part that wanted to _eat Victoria Chase alive_ \- _snarled_ in response.

The rest of her became aware of the state she was in.

The cold tile under her feet.

The blood on her lips that she had streaked across Victoria's own.

The salt and metal she tasted on Victoria's throat under her tongue.

The fingertips just underneath the waistband of her pantyhose.

The mercurial _boil_ somewhere in the bowl of her hips.

..

_Maybe Victoria had a point.._

Max's lips unsealed from around their chosen span of Victoria's throat with a pop she felt more than heard and she leaned back, her heels touching the ground for the first time in she didn't know how long.

She searched out Victoria's eyes as the taller girl relaxed her hold and shivered somewhat as the blonde's hands moved from their earlier positions to places a bit less intimate.

Max could still feel the flush on her face and the haze in her head as her heart tried to settle into a more appropriate rhythm, but Victoria's thumbs idly resting on her hips and the rake of her green eyes from the tips of her toes to the freckles on her cheeks made the process more complicated and _agonizingly_ slower than it really needed to be.

The faint blush on Victoria's cheeks and the wet sheen on her lips didn't completely offset the sting of her smug smile and raised brow, but it did help.

And then Victoria opened her mouth.

"Cold in here, Caulfield?" Victoria asked rhetorically as she visibly swept her eyes across Max's figure.

Max tried her best not to focus too hard on where the blonde's gaze happened to linger. She'd need all of her self-confidence to get through this without Victoria just running over her.

_'Hmm..'_

An idea began to take shape.

Max smiled.

"A little.." She said shyly, making a show of smoothing down the thin fabric of her tee shirt. "How can you tell?" Max asked in the most innocent tone she could manage.

She might have batted her eyelashes and bit the corner of her bottom lip for dramatic effect.

It was harder than it seemed, given the situation.

Victoria's mouth opened, but no words came out. The flush on her cheeks deepened a shade and the beginnings of a defensively snide comment started to form judging by the way her eyebrows had begun to pinch together towards the middle.

_'Perfect.'_

Max gasped in faux-shock and interrupted whatever it was that Victoria was going to say as she stepped forward and swiped a finger across the uncharacteristically stunned girl's lips.

"Oh my _Dog_ Victoria, what have you _done_ to yourself?" Max looked at her fingertip and back to Victoria's face positively aghast. "You're an absolute _mess!_ "

Max could almost _hear_ Victoria's nerves fraying, but she wasn't quite finished with the other girl just yet.

"Wait a sec', 'Tori, let me get that for you-" Max offered helpfully, every syllable calculated for maximum damage.

She casually reached for the hem of her shirt, looped a corner around her fingertip, and lifted it up towards Victoria's face-

"No."

A hand locked around her wrist before she could raise it -and her shirt along with it- too far above her navel.

Victoria held Max's wrist with one hand and pinched the bridge of her nose in mild frustration with the other.

"Not a chance in hell, Caulfield."

Victoria exhaled in a huff and opened her eyes, placing both hands on Max's shoulders at either side of her neck to keep her in place. Max started to open her mouth to continue teasing the flustered blonde but was stopped short when Victoria placed her whole hand over the freckled girl's mouth.

" _No._ " Victoria reiterated.

"Here's what's going to happen-" she said authoritatively. "When I let you go, I am going to turn around, go to my room, get my first aid kit, and come back here. When I come back I am going to wash my face, and then I'll bring you to your room. We are going to sit down, I am going to unfuck your face, and we will have an adult conversation about _tonight_. Nod your head if you're with me so far, hipster."

Max thought for a moment and then nodded. It honestly wasn't too bad of a plan.

Victoria's tone softened.

"Alright." she said as she turned towards the door. "I'll be right back so don't wander off and get kidnapped or something."

The click of the shutting door echoed through the mostly empty bathroom forcefully enough to jar Max into motion towards the sinks. The warm water in this part of the dorms usually took a bit to turn on, but Max needed all the time to collect her thoughts that she could get if she was being honest with herself.

The last hour or so rolled over her like a wave and she staggered as her head spun and her knees turned to jelly underneath her.

_'Holy shit..'_

Her shaking hands came up to her lips and brushed across the swollen and bruised skin they found there before sliding gently across the the long, angry scratches down her cheek.

Victoria had punched her in the face.

In fairness, Max _had_ called her a slut and attacked her over Nathan, but that was because.. why, exactly?

She couldn't really recall.

The last three days from her perspective had been an insane black whirl of awfulness that bordered on the _surreal_. There were times where she felt like a passenger in her own skin and even then those dissociations _still_ managed to feel more coherent and put-together than the spans of time that she would just outright _lose_ -

Steam from the faucet finally began to cloud up from the sinkbasin and she idly slid a hand under the stream before rubbing tenderly at her split lips.

Victoria had punched her and Max had gone blank.

She had felt a vague sense of pressure underneath her palms and her entire body _throbbed_ with an aggressive blood-deep tension she didn't have a name for.

She remembered Victoria choking on the floor of the Dark Room strangely superimposed with _Chloe-_

-she remembered disgust and revulsion and _grief_ and a soothing warmth and a soft susurrus being whispered into her hair that had felt like falling into bed after the longest day of her life.

She remembered all that in flashes.

She remembered kissing Victoria Chase perfectly.

Her fingertips lingered on her lips even after the blood had been rinsed away and only split pink skin remained.

_'Max, what the hell were you thinking?'_

She brought wet fingers up and swept her frazzled hair out of her face and winced when she brushed across a bruised span of scalp.

The sigh that escaped her as she turned towards her usual stall was a ragged, anxious thing. She absently shut and locked the door behind her, worked herself out of her pantyhose, and collapsed onto the toilet in an exhausted, grumbling heap.

She remembered kissing Victoria Chase perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She wasn't sure if the heat that Victoria kissed her back with made it all better or worse.

Her eyes idly scanned for patterns in the the ceiling, but there was no guidance to be found scattered across the waterstained tile above her head.

Another sigh.

She reached towards the dispenser at her side and a few moments later flushed the toilet.

 _'Mission accomplished, Max. Excellent work.'_ She thought sarcastically as she pulled her pantyhose up. Leave it to her to make going to the bathroom before bed into a black comedy.

The door to the bathroom brushed open as she stepped out of the stall and a quick glance confirmed that it was indeed Victoria. Max had a thought.

"Could you imagine if Dana walked in right now?" Max asked over the spray of the sink as she washed her hands. "Or basically anybody but Kate, I guess?"

She heard Victoria pause as the other girl reached into a shower stall and grabbed a showerbag that had been inside it.

"I'd prefer not to, honestly." came the reply. "And don't tempt Murphy while I'm close enough to get caught in the shitstorm, please."

There's the Victoria she knew and, well..

'Loved' was a strong word.

' _Thought was cute_ , in a bitchy sort of way..'

Yeah. That.

' _Her sensitive side is pretty adorable though to be honest.._ ' Max thought, before mentally changing subjects so she wouldn't embarrass herself as she turned to face the blonde who was now leaning over her own sink.

The tilt of the blonde's head as she rinsed the red off her lips gave her a perfect view of the pinkish streak along her jaw and down the side of her neck before it got lost in the broad strokes of purple and red someone had painted her throat with.

' _Not -someone-.'_ Max thought.

' _Me. I did that._ '

 _'_ J _esus..'_

Max shook her head as she stepped over to the blonde girl and reached into the open shower-bag to grab a dry washcloth off the very top.

Victoria froze as Max neared the bag but relaxed when she saw what she had grabbed.

She still zipped it shut and dropped it under the sink immediately after, though.

Odd.

"You missed a spot.." Max answered Victoria's unasked question as she wet the end of the cloth and began dabbing at the taller girl's neck. Victoria tensed when the warm cloth met skin, but gradually loosened up as Max moved up and away from her throat and towards the underside of her jaw.

Max really had made a mess, huh?

She laughed, but it wasn't a completely happy sort of thing.

Victoria shook her head in response and stepped away from the sink.

"Come on, Lamefield. You can mope in your own room where there's less traffic." Victoria said as she gathered her pair of bags in one hand and took Max's wrist with the other. "I'll even let you play some of your emo music if that'll make things easier."

"Victoria, we both know you have Sunny Day Real Estate's _Diary_ on vinyl in the box under your bed. You can stop playing coy about indie music whenever you feel comfortable." Max grumbled.

"Okay first off how the fuck do you know that?" Victoria asked, incredulous and blushing, then shook her head. "Secondly, _Diary_ is a classic and I'm _from_ Seattle. It doesn't count."

Victoria physically pulled Max the entire length of the hallway before guiding her into her own room, pausing only to turn on the light.

She still didn't let go of her arm.

Victoria brought Max to the edge of her bed.

"Sit." she commanded.

It seemed like a good idea so Max did. Only then did Victoria let her go.

Max watched the blonde girl turn towards her desk and grab her computer chair. Victoria dragged the chair as close to the edge of the bed as she could get it and sat down, her knees on either side of Max's own.

"Lean forward please." Victoria said as she reached into the bag on her lap and pulled out a pad of gauze, a cloth, and a small bottle of medical alcohol.

"This is going to sting, right?" Max asked, somewhat anxious.

"It'll only hurt once, dork." Victoria laughed.

Victoria was right.

"So." she began as she wiped the cloth down the scratches on Max's cheek.

How one syllable could be so heavy astounded Max, but she was spared from introspection when Victoria continued after a moment.

"Let's start at the beginning." she said.

Max nodded in response, careful not to disrupt Victoria's hand with the cloth.

"I'm sorry I punched you in the face. I'm less sorry about _this_ -" she indicated the scratches she was now fixing a bandage over, "-given the circumstances, but I'd like to think that helping clean it up makes us close to even, considering everything."

Max wasn't so sure, so she spoke up.

"I can put a bandage on my face and hide in my room all weekend, Victoria. You-" she gestured at Victoria's neck and up towards her eye, "- are a lot harder to hide or explain away." Max said, her tone worried.

Victoria scoffed.

"Do you have any idea how many turtlenecks I own? Don't answer that." she interrupted when she saw a smartass remark begin to form on Max's split lips.

" _Anyway_ , I can wear something with a high collar every day for a month without repeating anything once if I needed to. The only people with enough spine to ask about my eye will probably believe whatever I tell them about it anyway. I'm not too worried about them." Victoria said with more confidence in her voice than she showed on her face.

Maybe it was just because Max was so close that she was able to see through a bit of Victoria's facade.

The blonde's expression softened as she spread a smallish dot of antibacterial ointment across Max's lip.

"I'll protect you from Taylor if you keep Kate from killing me?" Victoria asked, only half joking.

Max couldn't fully speak, but her muffled "Mhmm-" was enough of an answer for Victoria as she gave Max's face one last once-over and began returning her supplies to her bag.

"Keep your cheek covered with that bandage until around lunchtime today and then take it off. Make sure it and your lips stay clean and moisturized and everything should be mostly normal in a few days." Victoria said as she set the bag in her lap at the foot of Max's bed and stood up, apparently only to turn the chair around so she could straddle the back of it when she sat back down.

Max felt heat rush to her cheeks but wasn't entirely sure why.

"Now then." Victoria began, her tone deadly serious. "We're going to talk about you taking advantage of me the way you did before this has time to get awkward."

Max's jaw dropped open. Victoria was really trying to put all this on _her?_

"Hold the hell up Victoria, I may have kissed you but you kissed me back! You even had a hand in my pantyhose when you told me to stop-" Max was halfway into a full rant when Victoria's firm voice brought her up short.

"I did kiss you back, Max. That's _why_ I asked you to stop."

Max paused, her mouth still open in her confusion.

Victoria's expression was _intense_.

"I _refuse_ to be an impulsive accident. I will not allow myself to be a _fucking regret, Maxine._ I'm _better_ than that." Victoria said, her voice low and hot like magma.

"I never.. I wouldn't-" Max began, but was again cut off.

"If you can tell me this _hasn't_ been the worst week of your life, I'll apologize." Victoria said. " _Your_ best friend was murdered in front of you. _My_ best friend lost his fight with his mental illness and killed someone, and I can't stop blaming myself for it because I should have seen it coming."

Max started to open her mouth, to explain to Victoria all the ways she was wrong about herself and how if it was anyone's fault it was _hers_ , but Victoria had already built up her momentum -had been building it for a while, if the heavy train of words spilling out of her mouth was any indication- so Max swallowed the platitudes for the moment and let the emotional blonde speak.

"After all of this _bullshit_ , you are _out of your mind_ if you think I'm going to let either one of us build up something that could just be thrown away as some heat-of-the-moment _mistake._ "

Victoria's voice was _venomous._

"So I hedged my bets. If the only kiss we ever had was going to be written off as an accident, I was going to put _everything I had_ into _every fucking second_ of it. If you decided in the morning it was all something that never should have happened, then I got my money's worth."

Victoria smiled. It was one of her old, predatory ones.

"If you wanted more, well, I left a good first impression."

There was a lot to pick apart from Victoria's diatribe, but Max focused on the easiest bits first.

"If anyone's to blame for Monday, Victoria, it's me-" Max continued speaking over Victoria's disbelieving scoff "- but where the hell do you get off thinking I'd just throw you away like an emotional tampon after crying my goddamn _eyes out_ on your shoulder after almost _killing_ you?"

Max's right hand itched. The dead girl on the bathroom floor in Max's mind had blonde hair instead of blue this time.

"This _has_ been the worst week of my fucking life, Victoria. I've seen too many of my friends die and if one more stranger looks at me with some pitiful expression on their face and tells me ' _It's not your fault, Max_ ' like they have any idea what they're talking about I am going to _lose my mind._ "

Victoria's toes dug into Max's carpet but the blonde girl stayed silent.

"I don't even remember most of the funeral, 'Tori-" Max said, her voice breaking towards the end. "I remember being so _angry_ I snapped one of my teeth and was so _fucking detached_ my first thought was about how to hide the evidence so nobody would notice! I have _no idea_ what I did after that because the next thing I remember is sitting on my bed, completely dressed, _at two in the morning._ "

Max ran a shaking hand through her hair.

"When I went to the bathroom the absolute last thing on my list of things to do was _'Black out and crush Victoria Chase's throat in a blind rage'_ but what do you fucking know? I managed to screw that one up too."

Max's fists clenched and she felt her jaw begin to tighten instinctively but a sharp, frustrated exhale was enough to snap herself out of one of her worse new habits. Victoria cleared her throat to speak but Max met her eye-to-eye and something in the brunette's gaze locked the blonde's words in her throat.

" _Let me finish, Victoria._ " Max asked.

Victoria obeyed.

Max smiled.

"I haven't felt like the driving force in my own life this _entire fucking week._ At best I've been half-conscious in the passenger seat and at worst I've been passed out in the god-damned trunk." Max was _fuming._ Victoria had never heard this amount of pure, animal vitriol from anyone but herself.

"You letting me cry all this _garbage_ out on your shoulder was like waking up from a _nightmare_. You could have walked away at any point in there. You could have called the fucking _cops_ and been justified after what I did to you, Victoria."

When her eyes met Victoria's they were red and ringed with dark circles, but no tears had fallen.

"So when I tell you that kissing you was the first real choice I remember making since all this _bullshit_ started, I need you to believe me."

Victoria swallowed hard.

Max grabbed the blonde girl's chair and pulled her towards her spot on the bed.

Their faces were inches apart.

Max smelled like soap and alcohol.

"So do you regret kissing _me_ , Victoria?" Max's words were blunt and heavy and made Victoria dizzy.

"Of course not, Max-"

Max's lips pressed against hers in a slow rush that stopped her in her tracks. She felt the layer of ointment on them smear in a sloppy streak before Max opened her mouth just wide enough to catch the ridge of Victora's lower lip between them and _pulled_ -

Victoria was left panting when Max pulled away.

Her blue eyes were steady and sharp like ice.

"I'm not asking you to marry me, Victoria. You were _there_ for me in a way no one else had been and I thought if we were close enough that I could cry myself out into your nightgown or choke you badly enough blood-vessels burst in your eyes, that we were close enough for me to kiss you when it felt right."

Victoria was speechless.

"Look." Max said. "You're worried that I'll wake up tomorrow and 'realize this was all a mistake', right?" Max asked, and at Victoria's mumbled assent she continued.

"I don't know how closely you've been paying attention, but you're only the second person I've ever kissed, and you're the first one to ever kiss me back. _That-_ " Max brushed her fingers across the deep bruise around Victoria's neck in a way that made the blonde girl shiver, "-was my 'heat-of-the-moment _mistake'_ and _that's_ what I'm worried about."

Max's fingers crept their way into Victoria's short hair like hungry vines.

Max's blue eyes _burned._

" _This_ -" she said as she leaned in, her voice a low whisper, "- _is all me._ "

* * *

Sometime later they broke apart.

Max's face was flushed and her lips were sore, but the dizzy -almost _drunken_ \- expression on Victoria's face and the way her own lips, as pink and swollen and wet as they were, refused to close together made a warmth that was half pride and half _complicated_ bloom in her chest.

".. thank you, Victoria." Max whispered.

The words brought Victoria out of her daze and she flushed as they sank in. She absentmindedly licked her lips and after a moment her eyes widened and her blush deepened. She looked at her toes because she couldn't look anywhere else, but her own whispered words were still loud enough to be heard.

"You looked like you needed a friend, Maxine.."

Max laughed and the high, soft sound drew Victoria's green eyes up to meet Max's own pair of blues.

"I'm not sure friends kiss each other quite the way we just did, Victoria." Max said as an uncharacteristic smirk grew across her face.

 _'Geez, whatever makes Victoria so -her- must be contagious..'_ Max joked internally but laughed out loud.

Victoria look like she was going to ask what was funny, so Max continued speaking.

"At least I don't kiss Kate like that." She said and watched as Victoria positively bristled in response. Max made a quiet mental note and kept on. "Every now and then she'll kiss me on the cheek, though."

Max adjusted the note she had just made.

Victoria apparently had a jealous streak the size of a small moon.

The girl was basically rabid at this point.

"And don't get me started on Warren-"

"-That fucking weirdo!?" Victoria gasped. Max stopped short.

"Huh?" she eloquently asked.

Victoria thrust herself up and out of Max's chair to better gesture wildly around the room.

"Have you _seen_ the way he looks at you, Caulfield!?" Victoria asked, her incredulity matched only by her alarm.

Max looked at Victoria like she was crazy, shrugged, and fell back onto her bed with a sigh.

"No, Caulfield. That _boy_ isn't right!" Max couldn't see Victoria anymore, but she could feel the tall blonde's irritation.

She spat the word 'boy' like it was a curse.

"You sure?" Max asked as she covered her eyes with an arm to block out some of the light.

"Of _course_ I'm sure! He has a literal stalker-wall of pictures of you in his locker, Max!"

..

What.

Max lifted her arm enough to uncover one eye and raised a very skeptical eyebrow.

".. really?"

"Fucking YES. I had _assumed_ the two of you were dating or something but ' _recent events_ '" -Oh god Victoria actually did real airquotes that was precious- "have informed me that no, he's just a fucking weirdo."

"Victoria?" Max asked as she scooted back to place her back against the wall.

Victoria paused in her agitated pacing of Max's carpet to cut her eyes at the smaller brunette.

"Yes, Max?" she asked flippantly.

"Have you been stalking my stalker?"

To Victoria's credit, she only completely shut down for two seconds before managing a response.

"Fuckin' _somebody_ has to! You're lucky he hasn't tried to drag you off somewhere in the back of his shitheap car by now!"

Victoria saw Max's embarrassed blush and noticed the way she tried to hide behind her knees.

"Max, that little creep _hasn't_ tried to drag you off somewhere in his shitheap car, has he?" Victoria asked. She was unnaturally still, and her hands were folded primly in front of her waist.

".. No?" Max answered.

 _'.. not in this timeline, at least..'_ she mentally appended.

Victoria relaxed, but only somewhat.

"Good. If he had, I'd have to dispose of him, and frankly that'd be a waste of resources. To be honest I'm _still_ tempted. You know he tries to look in your dorm window in the mornings, right?" Victoria added, glancing at Max from over her shoulder as the blonde girl ostensibly looked at her wall of Polaroid selfies.

Max's jaw dropped.

"You have to be joking."

"I fucking wish!" Victoria said, her agitated voice in contrast to her careful actions as she gently unpinned one of the selfies from the wall.

"I run around the school grounds every other morning and at least once a week I'll catch that spooky little creep standing behind the corner of the dorms just _staring_ at that window right there." Victoria pointed at the window behind Lisa, Max's pet tree.

Max paled.

"Look Max, I'm not trying to give you nightmares or anything this late at night-" she glanced at the clock "-early in the morning, rather- but just keep an eye on that boy. Please." Victoria looked dead serious, so Max nodded in response.

Victoria looked down at the Polaroid in her hand and then to Max.

"I'm keeping this, by the way." Victoria said as though if her voice was confident enough Max wouldn't notice the _furious_ blush on her face.

Max just raised an eyebrow in response.

"Don't look at me like that, Lamefield. It's just a good picture is all."

Max wordlessly beckoned Victoria to come forward. She was way too sleepy for this shit.

Victoria closed the distance with the edge of the bed in two broad strides and held the picture out for Max to see.

Max shivered when she glanced at the Polaroid, looking at it only long enough to confirm which one it was.

"That was the morning of my first full day here.. " Max said, fighting down a yawn.

Victoria looked back down at the picture and did her best to hide a smile. Max still saw it, though.

"I was so excited I could hardly sleep the night before. That's why I look as exhausted as I do."

She had contemplated that particular picture rather often.

"You're really happy here too, though. Bedhead looks nice on you, Caulfield." Victoria admitted, catching Max by surprise.

Max tugged on Victoria's wrist until the blonde got the message and sat down on the edge of the bed. She rolled over onto her side and grumbled contentedly as she curled around Victoria's butt. Victoria caught on quickly and pulled one of the sleepy brunette's hands into her lap and, after a moment of hesitation, twined their fingers together.

Max giggled and yawned again.

"I meant what I said, 'Tori-" she trailed off. "I'm not worried about being 'Facebook Official' or meeting your parents or moving into your room or anything like that right now. Just being able to sit like this is perfect.." she mumbled.

Victoria just squeezed Max's smaller hand in hers.

"I like you a lot. I like making you blush just as much as I like pissing you off, and I'm kind of a big fan of kissing you too, if you haven't noticed.."

Victoria _had_ noticed.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd like us to spend some time together more, Victoria. You make me really happy, in a lot of different ways."

Victoria looked down at the picture of Sleepy Max in her lap, and then to the real-life Sleepy Max at her side, and thought about what Max was saying.

They sat like that for a few minutes while Victoria thought to herself about everything that had happened.

The small hand in hers was warm, from the soft pad of her palm all the way out to the slightly calloused tips of her fingers. Victoria thought about all the sad love-songs that tiny little hand had played every morning since the girl had moved into the dorm across from hers.

She thought about all the time _she_ had spent those mornings lingering as close as she could get to the origin to the sound, listening attentively as the brunette had tirelessly fumbled through the notes over and over until she could play each and every one perfectly enough that she could sing over them, too.

She ran her eyes over the fingernails, bitten short and ragged from stress and anxiety and so much _bullshit_ that had been heaped on the girl at her side and refused to quit.

 _'Fuck..'_ Victoria thought as she looked at the ceiling and sighed.

She was in _so_ far over her head.

She looked back down at the hand she held in hers, and thought.

Quickly, she came to a conclusion, over the sound of gentle snoring somewhere to her left.

She grabbed her phone, swiped over to the app she needed, carefully framed her subject, found her focus, and shot.

The soft _snap_ of the virtual shutter echoed through Max's room, but the sleeping brunette didn't stir.

Not even when Victoria softy - _very softly_ \- brought the small hand in hers up to her face.

"You make me happy too, Max.." she whispered to no one as she brushed her lips across pinkish knuckles and smiled her own sleepy smile.

The clock read 4:45. The earliest-rising students would be getting up in an hour or so, even on a Saturday. Victoria sighed and glanced at the sleeping girl curled around her like some sort of hipster armadillo.

An involuntary smile crept across her face and a giggle bubbled up from somewhere inside of her.

Victoria Chase didn't _giggle._

Max grumbled something completely incoherent in her sleep.

_'.. Apparently exceptions could be made..'_

Victoria looked at the picture on her phone: both of their hands twined together and held softly on Victoria's lap.

It wasn't a particularly technical shot; Victoria's nightgown was riding up a little high from where it had been torn off to give Max something to wipe at her face with back in the bathroom. The violet-sheer material was wrinkled and a stray drop of blood had rubbed off onto it somehow. Victoria's knuckles were bruised across the ridge from earlier, too.

Max could take a better picture in her sleep. As the Polaroid she held in her lap could attest, she _had._

Still, looking at Max's delicate fingers tangled up in hers made something in her core do flips. Victoria felt something like butterflies in her chest every time Max made a sleepy little noise beside her and would have given anything at all to keep this memory of them fresh forever.

She saved the picture.

She set it as her wallpaper.

It was a little cheesy, but Max made her _feel_ a little cheesy so that was fucking fine.

She turned to her side and groaned inwardly as she realized what she had to do.

She gently brushed her fingers through Max's hair, softly whispering the brunette's name until her eyes fluttered open.

Max's response was grumpy and only mostly completely incoherent this time.

"..-wuzzit'tori'm' _sleeby_ -.. "

_'Fucking. Shakespeare.'_

Victoria's smile was soft and her voice was softer as she whispered to the exhausted girl at her side.

"Max, I need you to actually get under the blanket if you're going to go to sleep right now." Victoria said, before continuing. "Also unlock your phone so I can put my number in it. I've got a picture I want to send you."

Max fumbled blindly at her nightstand with the hand that wasn't currently busy holding Victoria's until she found her phone. She slid her thumb in some angular pattern and her phone clicked open. Max immediately flung it away from her like it was a live hand grenade and wiggled under the blankets like some sort of little dorky caterpillar or something.

She still didn't let go of Victoria's hand.

Victoria sent Max the picture she had taken of their hands together and waited for the brunette's phone to ding. She didn't want to snoop around when she opened the text she had sent, but _literally seven unread messages from Warren_ was kind of hard to ignore. She filed that information away for later as she paged over to 'Contacts' and put her own number inside.

She thought for a moment and blushed.

 _'Think of it as a peace offering, Victoria.. '_ she thought as she typed in her name and pressed Save.

'-Tori-'

It didn't seem so bad when Max said it.

She set the contact image as the cheesy little picture she had just taken, saved that too, and closed the phone.

Her blush didn't go away, but that was fine.

She reached down to her bag with the hand that wasn't currently occupied and placed the Polaroid she had asked Max to give her inside and stood up.

Max grumbled some more when Victoria was finally forced to let go of her hand, but the blonde leaned down and brushed her hand through the loose hair above Max's ear until she settled back down.

If anybody saw her like this she would probably die.

 _'It just might be worth it..'_ She thought as she stepped away from the bed and towards the lightswitch on the far wall.

It flicked off with a quiet snap and the room was washed in the indigo light of almost-morning.

It looked positively serene.

Max flopped around and adjusted her pillow.

"g'night'tori.." Max mumbled into the blankets.

Victoria still heard her, though.

She smiled, small and soft like Max's hands or a lullaby or the light slipping through the curtained window just then.

This all might not be worth dying for, but

It was definitely worth _living_ for.

"Goodnight, Max." Victoria said.

 _'Thank you, Maxine.'_ Victoria thought.

She closed the door behind her.

_'Thank you.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was kinda gay.
> 
> I've gotten my pace mostly figured out. Expect updates on Wednesdays-Fridays roughly weekly. If anything throws that off, I'll post it on my bio here and/or on ffn. Next chapter we get to talk to some side-characters and follow up on a couple of strings from Chapter 1. Plot!
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading. Review, Favorite, PM, and all that jazz and I'll catch you around this time next week with some more Chasefield to help fight back the withdrawals until the other fics update.
> 
> Love y'all
> 
> alt_


	4. two moons

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

4

* * *

Flashes.

Something like heat-haze over asphalt in the way that shimmering warmth flickered across her body; a way that was so much more than skin-deep.

She was kindling.

Fingers, _tongues_ of flame lapped and branched and kissed tender flesh and she was _burning_ -

And she was awake.

Gasping.

Her trembling fingers' tips found damp cloth clinging to damper skin and she hissed as she stroked a sweat-slicked stretch of herself, still half-trapped and clouded by sleep's heady haze.

_Sinking._

Fingers under cotton-

_Searching._

-biting into her, slipping like soft lips over teeth or a slow tongue across citrus, their strike setting sparks and cinders alight-

_Ceaseless_

-to send her shivering-

_Shaking_

-sundered and spitted and soundlessly shouting on the span and plunge of searing-

_Starving_

-Fingers-

* * *

Max came fully awake slowly, groaning and shifting herself out of the steady sunlight for as long as she could until finally she had come to press against the merciless surface of her wall and was forced to face facts.

Facts, and her much too bright room.

For a moment she considered simply stuffing a pillow over her face and waiting out the sunshine, but the sudden jolt of pain from her cheek as she rubbed sleep from her eyes made her think twice.

She surrendered.

Her toes dug reluctantly into plush carpet and she made to stand but was stopped short as the press of her thighs together brought a flood of memories to her mind and a wash of color to her cheeks.

She needed to text Victoria.

... She needed to change panties, too.

God, what was wrong with her?

Her tongue probed carefully at her cracked-but-whole lips as she found her phone on her nightstand and unlocked it.

Blue eyes skimmed over several unread messages from Warren without really registering them before coming to rest on a single text from Kate, and a pair of messages from Victoria.

Or -'Tori-, as it were.

The flush on Max's cheeks was suddenly heavy enough to sink into the freckled skin of her chest.

_And that picture.._

A hand worked its way under the waistband of her panties (for the second time that morning, she remembered) on her way across the room to her dresser and with a bit of effort and a well-practiced wiggle, the still-damp cotton was wound loosely around her ankles and flung blindly by a foot towards the hamper in the corner.

Towards, but not into.

She had missed.

Damn.

Her search through the dresser was quickly abandoned in favor of snatching a wrinkled-but-clean pair of flannel pajama bottoms off the top of her laundry basket along with an oversized band tee that conveniently doubled as one of her more-standard animal affairs.

_Thanks, Toe._

The little goat on the cover of that album had always struck her as the weird sort of cute, but that was the story for goats everywhere really.

She shook her head and put the shirt on. She had things to do.

Her mouth was dry and she had _morning business_ to attend to, but even from her dresser she could hear the warbling tones of Top 40 Pop from what was undoubtedly the stereo in Dana's room.

Didn't she know it was-

(Max checked her phone)

-.. 11:45 on a Saturday morning..

 _'You win this round, Dana.'_ Max grumbled internally as she grabbed her phone again. She spared a moment to check her reflection in the black mirror of her phone's screen and confirmed that _yes, it really was that bad_ before conceding defeat and pulling up the newest contact on her list.

 **Max:** _what's a girl gotta do to get some water around here._

Victoria's reply came quickly enough that Max hadn't even had time to pop the latches on her guitar case.

 **-'Tori-:** _That depends entirely on how thirsty you are, Maxine_

Victoria _please._

Max pointedly did -not- glance back at the puddled cloth next to her hamper and decided the unnecessarily difficult blonde really didn't need to know the full answer to that question.

A quick google image search later and Max had the visual-aid she needed to describe her situation. A pic of a particularly dried-up and terrifying Spongebob staring at a vase of water.

Perfect.

Max had learned her lesson and didn't bother picking up her guitar just yet.

Sure enough-

 **-'Tori'-:** _Jfc that episode was traumatic_

Max snorted.

 **-'Tori'-:** _Anyway, I'm with Courtney and Hayden at Fugly Bob's but we're about to leave. I'll bring you back a burger and stuff? It'll be like 20_

Oh my Dog Victoria was an angel

 **Max:** _that would be purrfect:))_

 **Max:** _I'm gonna see if I can sneak past dana long enough to shower xoxo_

Wait shit was xoxo too needy no no nononono-

Max flung her phone towards her bed and hurriedly set her guitar to the side so she could stand and busy herself gathering her shower supplies.

Anything to keep her hands too busy to climb into her hair-

It took her a few minutes to pull everything she needed together, but there was no telltale _ding_ from her phone to confirm or deny the source of her new anxiety.

_Oh, god._

Dana's music pounded through the hall, but that only made the silence in Max's room more stark by contrast.

She had to get out of here.

_Don't be rash, Max.._

Victoria was out at lunch. Kate was volunteering at the senior center. Dana was in all likelihood dancing in her room with Juliet getting things ready for the next Vortex party. Courtney was with Victoria.

Brooke was either outside with a drone or in her room studying.

Stella and Alyssa were wildcards and could be anywhere.

Getting to the showers without being seen was doable.

Max peeked her head outside into the hall - _'Clear, thank god'_ \- and made her way to the bathroom as quickly and carefully as she could.

A small sigh of relief escaped her when she found she was alone in the bathroom as well. She took a moment to drop her shower-bag outside her usual stall and to let the water warm up while she dealt with the pressure in her bladder.

That particular matter having been handled, she could finally step under the warm shower's spray and think through everything that had happened the last few days like a rational adult.

_'Yeah, right..'_

Her tone managed to be self-deprecating even in her own head.

 _'No, Max, none of that.'_ She thought as she gingerly rubbed in her usual shampoo. Her scalp had apparently bruised from the night before.

Ugh.

_'Alright, just think this through and stop agonizing over the details. You kissed Victoria, but she kissed you too, and -she- was the one that was worried you'd want to take it all back in the morning.'_

Was Victoria right?

 _Did_ Max regret kissing her?

It only took a moment of introspection to find her answer.

_Hell no._

That much was certain.

_I don't regret kissing her for a second, but I -am- scared._

She paused and considered for a moment, but her thoughts _felt_ right. Scared was a good word for how she felt about her new.. arrangement -for lack of a better word- with Victoria Chase.

She liked Victoria.

She liked the caring, compassionate side of her that not everyone got to see. She liked the crazy confidence the other girl exuded in _waves_ as she moved through her daily routine.

Max liked the little vulnerabilities that Victoria would let show when she thought no one was looking.

She even liked the bitchy Victoria that always crumbled after even one unexpected kind word.

Max smiled.

Liking Victoria wasn't the problem, even though it kind-of was.

The problem was that she might like Victoria _too much._

She grumbled as she dipped her head back under the spray long enough to rinse the shampoo out.

The last thing she wanted to do was come on too strong or be too clingy and wind up pushing the blonde girl away-

_-a smoke filled bedroom, a dare, a kiss, a push-_

Max's hands stalled halfway to her hair as her chest locked up and she froze.

The bathroom door opened and shut.

Her eyes came unfocused.

Conditioner slipped between her loose fingers and ran down her wrist _drip-drip-drip-splat_

Her right hand _itched-_

An instant of pressure and release somewhere behind her eyes and something thick and warm and metallic was trickling from her nose _dripdripdripsplat-_

_-Knock knock knock-_

Max was halfway standing before she realized she was back in her room.

She brought her fingers to her lips-

_No blood_

-and up to her hair-

_Still wet_

The knocking stopped.

Her phone buzzed.

Her hand reached towards her nightstand on reflex and opened her phone.

 **-'Tori'-:** _Answer the door nerd my hands are full I'm literally texting with my nose right now_

Oh.

Max absently threw the towel off her shoulders and pulled her tee shirt on all the way before walking to the door and unlocking it.

Victoria stood there in all her frustrated glory holding two bags that smelled delicious enough to slap Max out of her stupor and coaxed an embarrassing grumble from her stomach.

Perfectly timed.

Victoria smirked and shook her head.

"The top bag in my right hand is yours and so is _this_ -" she said as she shifted her things around, holding a large bottle of water out for Max to take.

Victoria sighed as her load became significantly more bearable.

"Okay, this other bag goes to Taylor because she's cramping and would knifefight someone for a bacon cheeseburger and she'll probably steal me for a while to chill, but we should really talk sometime soon." She said in a way that was halfway a question.

Max nodded decisively, meeting Victoria in the middle.

"Definitely." She said, but smiled nervously. "Kate-"

-Victoria shifted-

"-asked if we could hang out when she got back from the senior center and I haven't replied yet because I wanted to talk to you about it because of _this,_ " Max said, gesturing to the still-red scratches on her cheek, "since she'll definitely ask and it concerns _you_ and I thought that-"

Victoria grabbed her wrist as she idly waved it around to punctuate her anxious rambling.

"Caulfield. Chill." Victoria said sharply as she gently but evenly pressed Max back into her room and followed her inside.

Max blinked.

"We'll talk this all the way through later and figure everything out, but for right now, so nobody-" Victoria's green eyes fell pointedly on Max, "- has to worry themselves into a wreck, I feel comfortable making _this_ much clear."

Victoria reached her free hand up and caught Max's chin long enough to lean down and press their lips together.

The blonde girl tasted a little bit like salt.

"I'm not _ashamed_ of you, or afraid to be 'out'. You're fucking _perfect_ , as infuriating as it is-"

This time Victoria's kiss was just a little more frustrated, but it brought heat to Max's cheeks anyway.

The blonde quickly continued speaking from _very_ close to Max's face.

"-And me putting my name on you might even be the hint your stalker needs that he's been barking up the wrong tree."

Warren wasn't a stalker..

.. probably.

"Anyway," she said as she shifted the remaining bag of food she held, "What I'm trying to say is that the only reason I'm not making us blatantly public right now is because I don't want everyone's first impression of us to happen when we look like literal posterchildren for dysfunctional relationships." Victoria tugged the material of her cream cashmere turtleneck down far enough to flash the thick bruise around her throat.

It had darkened to a deep blue overnight, and only even began to fade to lighter tones on the far ends of Victoria's throat tapering off towards the nape of her neck.

Max immediately felt sick to her stomach.

Victoria saw her blanch and smirked.

"Own it, Caulfield." Victoria demanded. "Besides, I'm not the one that looks like an 80's action hero."

At that, Victoria's hand snuck upwards she brushed the back of her knuckles against the grooves she had made in Max's face. Something flickered across her expression faster than Max could make sense of and the blonde leaned down again.

"Really, don't worry about it.." she whispered as Max instinctively came onto her tiptoes to help close the distance between them.

Victoria still made Max close the last few inches herself, despite the firm hand she had in the smaller brunette's hair.

By the time they had finished, Victoria's usual smirk had bloomed into a full Cheshire grin. She ran her free hand across her neck over the collar of her sweater and her sharp green eyes locked with the freckled girl across from her.

".. because I think I like the way you look on me, Maxine."

How Victoria could look like the cat that ate the canary while blushing from cheek to chin was beyond Max's understanding, but she wasn't really in the condition to ask too many questions at the moment.

She realized something as the door closed behind Victoria though.

_-red, streaked from lip to throat-_

She liked the way she looked on Victoria, too.

* * *

Taylor opened the door on the first knock and the look in her eyes made Victoria take a step back. Victoria's delicious burden was snatched from her as soon as the shorter blonde laid eyes on it with a fervor Victoria didn't see very often. In an eyeblink, Taylor had collapsed back on her bed with a flop Victoria could _feel_ and was fiddling with her laptop.

In a moment, some cheesy Netflix teen drama was again playing on the widescreen TV on the wall and Taylor was patting the top of the bed next to her, burger somehow already in her mouth.

Victoria sighed.

There was a reason she loved this girl, but some days it was harder than it needed to be.

Victoria walked towards the bed, setting the bottle of cherry Dr. Pepper she knew Taylor had Big Plans for on the floor next to the foot of it before kicking her shoes off and settling in next to the other blonde.

She couldn't hear it from across the room, but up close Taylor was making outright _lewd_ noises around the burger in her mouth.

Yep. This was going to be one of the hard days.

"Taylor, you're a fucking degenerate."

Taylor moaned louder.

Jesus.

Taylor swallowed and then looked at her out of the corner of her eye like _she_ was the one being a weirdo.

"This burger is the most action I've had in _weeks_ , Victoria. I don't wanna hear it."

She took another bite.

"And that's my problem why again?" Victoria shot back while stealing a french fry.

Taylor did her best impression of a standard Chase Scoff and narrowed her eyes. "I'm sorry, who was it that clam-jammed me with Ashton at the last party we had? Tall, blonde, bitchy? Ring a bell?"

Victoria huffed and would have looked at the TV in protest if what was on it was any less unwatchable.

"Exactly. Let me enjoy this." Taylor said, on an entirely new level of smug.

She didn't win these back-and-forths often. Victoria'd let her have this one.

She got about four seconds into a genuine attempt to follow.. whatever it was.. happening on the screen before physically cringing and rolling onto her back just for the change of pace.

"How do you _watch_ this shit, Sweet T?" Victoria asked, absolutely dumbfounded. "That dude hasn't been in high school in like, ten years minimum."

Taylor 'hmm'd thoughtfully and shrugged.

"He's still cute though."

Again, _Jesus_.

Victoria couldn't stop her nose from crinkling in mild disgust.

Taylor pressed her lips together and cocked an eyebrow.

"You don't get to judge, V. We both know your type." She said with entirely too much surety for Victoria's comfort. This didn't bode well.

Still, the best way out was often through.

"Oh do we now? Care to enlighten me? It'd be _terrible_ if I was the last person to know what my 'type' was, wouldn't it?" Victoria said with more confidence than she really felt.

Taylor just laughed.

"You sure you wanna go that far, V? I'm more than willing to let you keep your pride on this one." Taylor conceded, before taking another bite of her burger.

Perfect. She was trying to back out already.

.. Still, something didn't sit right with Victoria about that smirk..

"You're awful at bluffing, T." Victoria said haughtily. "But please, share with the class if you think you know something I don't."

Taylor's eyes glinted as she half pounce/half flopped onto Victoria.

"I think you've got a thing for freckled little brunettes-" she managed to get out before Victoria slammed a hand over her mouth in raw panic. Taylor immediately began wriggling to escape Victoria's hold on her but the taller blonde had apparently been blessed with fear-induced unearthly strength, so Taylor had to swallow her pride and settle for _alternative methods_.

Victoria felt the wet heat of a tongue rake against her palm and her body seized up of its own volition. Taylor saw her chance and took it, pushing one arm against the joint of Victoria's elbow and breaking the short-haired girl's hold over her mouth.

"I knew it!" She shouted triumphantly as she took one of Victoria's wrists in her hand and pinned it to the bed next to her ear, then reached underneath Victoria's thrashing head with her opposite arm to further secure the hand she had pinned.

"Talk, slut!" Taylor commanded from her position above Victoria.

To Victoria's credit, she kept a straight face for about three seconds before the laughter became too hard to fight down and the absurdity of the situation overwhelmed her embarrassment.

Taylor might have taken a few jujitsu classes, but the poor girl just wasn't what anyone would consider a Top.

Taylor's eyes visibly swept over Victoria and after a few moments that knowing glint was back in her eyes and a small smile swept across her face.

"Does she know?" Taylor asked, Victoria's wrist still pinned next to her head.

There would be no escape.

"You'll never get me to talk, you fucking amateur!" Victoria gasped defiantly, managing to somehow pull off 'snide confidence' despite her current position.

Her expression faltered somewhat as Taylor shook her head in mock-sadness and sighed audibly.

"It appears you don't understand how dire your situation really is.." Taylor said in her best generic villain voice. "We'll have to rectify that immediately."

Victoria's attempts to escape became a bit more urgent as she saw Taylor begin to wiggle her fingers ominously in front of her face. That plus the evil glint in Taylor's eyes meant only one thing.

"God you're such a fucking _stereotype!_ " Victoria spat as Taylor's fingers crept ominously towards the pit of her arm.

"You're lucky you're still wearing this giant sweater or it'd be even worse! Now talk!"

"Not a chance in hell!"

Victoria twisted and felt something catch behind her head near Taylor's wrist as she tried to get enough leverage to slide out from under the other blonde, but a wordless gasp of what sounded like triumph from the shorter girl unsettled her.

"What's that on your neck, V? I _knew_ you were being weird-" Taylor said as she jerked her free hand towards the collar of Victoria's cashmere pullover. Victoria's eyes widened and she sucked a breath in through her teeth.

Suddenly her struggles became very, very real.

Her free right arm shot up and behind Taylor's head and pulled her into her chest as closely as she could manage while at the same time she planted her feet into the surface of the bed, bucked her hips, and tipped the pair of them forcefully sideways with Victoria gaining a dominant position straddling the other girl.

_How much had she seen?_

Victoria loosened her hold on Taylor's head so she could lean back and gauge her reaction better.

"Hiding a few love-bites, V?" Taylor said from below her like she had caught Victoria red-handed committing some sort of crime.

".. V?" Taylor asked when she noticed Victoria's sudden stillness and the overall change in mood.

Victoria paused and honestly evaluated her options.

Taylor was her best friend.

Taylor was entirely too perceptive.

Taylor would probably find out anyway.

Victoria met Taylor's eyes and swallowed her nerves as best she could.

"T, don't freak out." She said, as the hand she didn't have pinning Taylor's arms above her head went to her collar.

"What are you.." she trailed off, going silent as Victoria worked the neck of her sweater down low enough to show the _handprints-_

"Victoria what the _fuck!_ " she shouted, jerking up as far as she could manage before the blonde on top of her put a hand over her mouth and pushed her back onto the bed with a flat expression on her face.

"I said don't freak out." Victoria said. "Let me explain this to you before you jump to crazy conclusions and try to murder someone, okay?"

She took her hand off Taylor's mouth.

"Bullshit! Somebody tried to fucking _kill_ you, Victoria!"

Victoria watched as something clicked in Taylor's head.

"Your eye, too.. " Taylor swallowed. "Someone choked you hard enough a blood vessel burst in your eye and you're asking me _not_ to gut them?"

Victoria's voice was level despite the nerves she felt as she spoke.

"I am."

Taylor recoiled like she'd been slapped.

"Fucking _why-_ "

"It was Max, T."

Taylor closed her mouth quickly enough that her teeth clicked together.

"I'm only telling you this because you're my best friend and you'd come to your own conclusions anyway and the last thing anybody needs is you flying off the handle and doing something rash." Victoria said as she slid sideways off Taylor's hips to sit more reasonably with her back leaning against the wall.

She saw Taylor begin to open her mouth as an indignant look crossed her face but Victoria held up a hand and the other girl stilled.

"It was after the funeral and Max wasn't in a good state of mind. Neither was I, for that matter, and we both said some things. I punched her-"

-Taylor's eyes widened-

"-and she hit me back. Something happened and she had a _really_ bad reaction, T.. "

Victoria slumped against the wall and huffed tiredly, and that by itself was enough of a sign to Taylor that something major was going on. She pushed herself upright and slid over next to Victoria while keeping an eye on the taller blonde's expression just in case.

Victoria always spoke mostly with her eyes, anyway.

After a moment, Victoria continued.

"T, I haven't seen _anybody_ break down like that. Not you when you found out about your mom, or Nate having an episode when his meds switched. It was like she wasn't _there_ anymore."

Victoria swallowed.

"So I talked to her until she settled down.."

Something about the way she said that raised a flag in Taylor's mind.

"That's _all_ you did? Just talked to her?"

Victoria was way too physical when she was emotional to have watched a nervous wreck from arm's reach, especially when it was someone she had _'strong feelings'_ for, positive or negative.

Judging by Victoria's flinch, she was right.

".. I may have hugged her, too.."

-Bingo-

"But she looked like she needed it, okay? Fuck.. " Victoria looked up at the ceiling and ran a frustrated hand down her face.

Taylor mulled over what her friend was telling her in silence, only moving to take Victoria's hand in her own when it didn't seem like the other girl would be talking in the immediate future.

After a short but tense silence, Victoria spoke up again.

"Look, Sweet T.. I know how bad this-" A hand came up to idly rub at her throat "-looks, but you didn't _see_ her. She went from having her hands around my neck to curled up in a corner wailing like a ghost in a horror movie as soon as she realized what she was doing.. "

Taylor made to speak up, but Victoria squeezed her hand and she quietened.

"She only even _began_ to calm down when I told her that I was okay. The girl had a fucking _meltdown_ because she thought she'd hurt me, so I pulled her into my lap and talked to her until she got her feet back under her."

Taylor's lips pressed together as she thought.

".. And then what happened?" She asked, having a suspicion.

Victoria was very conspicuously silent.

"Victoria.. "

Victoria huffed and looked Taylor in the from over the tops of her knees.

"Would you believe we laughed it off and went back to our rooms?"

Taylor fucking _snorted_.

"When my mom had her first relapse I remember you didn't stop quietly losing your mind until you saw that I had eaten real food and was in bed asleep." Taylor said.

Victoria scoffed and looked away, focusing on something in the corner on the far side of the room.

"I literally fell asleep with you _petting_ me, Victoria."

A grumble this time. Victoria buried her head in her knees but Taylor could still see the embarrassed flush across the tips of her ears.

"So no, I don't believe for a second that you let 'Max _Fucking_ Caulfield' just toddle off back to her room to mope until morning. You would have paced a hole in your floor and been up my ass at the crack of dawn because you were anxious and needed someone to vent to because you hadn't made sure she was okay."

Victoria raised her head up enough to peek at her from over her knees.

Her look was venomous in the same way baby snakes were venomous.

Taylor just put her hand on Victoria's head and buried her fingers into blonde hair.

"Wanna know what _I_ think happened?" Taylor asked with way too much misguided confidence in her tone to mean anything like good, in Victoria's opinion.

Victoria grumbled something that sounded vaguely like _'Do tell'_ into her knees as she embraced the inevitable.

"I think you kissed her." Taylor said goadingly, but Victoria's small laugh wasn't the response she had expected.

Victoria propped her chin on her knees and something on the mischievous end of smug glimmered somewhere in her expression.

"Not quite."

The gears turning in Taylor's head must have been misaligned because what they were telling her just _didn't_..

".. No fucking way." She said, like if she was skeptical enough then reality would just fix itself and things would suddenly make sense again.

Victoria's smirk slowly spread into something _more_ and she looked very intently at the tops of her knees.

Oh _god.._

Victoria Chase was blushing like a schoolgirl.

 _Max Caulfield_ kissed Victoria Chase, who was now on her bed blushing like a _fucking_ schoolgirl.

This was a crisis.

Why did _everything_ with this girl have to turn into a crisis?

Taylor bit the proverbial bullet.

"What's the damage?"she asked.

Victoria just arched a delicate eyebrow and pretended not to understand.

"What do you mean?" she replied evasively.

"I _mean_ how salvageable is this whole situation? Was it just a one time thing, did you slap her and make her apologize, is there a marriage contract-"

Taylor heard Victoria make a little distressed moan into the tops of her knees and let herself trail off as the blonde girl reached into her purse at the side of the bed.

What was she.. ?

Victoria tossed her phone at Taylor like the thing had bitten her and did her best to disappear into her corner.

Taylor caught it (like she'd let her best friend's brand new Samsung hit the ground no matter how difficult she was being at the time), casually flipped it right-side-up, and turned the screen on.

Oh  
_  
_ She looked up at Victoria, curled up into a nervous ball and backed into a corner on her bed, then back down at the phone she held.

She looked at the pair of wide green eyes staring at her, and back down at the pair of hands on the screen.

_Oh._

A small hand with a constellation of little brown freckles dusted across the back, held -fingers interlocked- within a larger, paler, manicured one, both of which were pulled into what she knew to be Victoria's lap and held closely - _protectively-_ against her belly.

"Oh, _Victoria.._ "

Taylor crawled on her knees towards her friend in the corner and pulled her down all the way onto the surface of the bed.

She felt Victoria's body jerk slightly next to her with what was either a laugh or a sob so she hedged her bets by finding a hand to squeeze.

"Victoria you're _so_ gay for this girl."

Another jerk.

 _Definitely_ a laugh that time.

".. shut the fuck up, T.."

"When are we going to get the U-Haul?"

"That's offensive, T."

"And that wasn't a definite no, Victoria."

Victoria huffed and rolled over so her back was facing Taylor's chest.

They laid there like that in silence for a while. After a bit, Taylor cleared her throat and spoke up.

"V, I'm going to be honest with you here." she began, and saw Victoria tilt her head to look at her out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm happy for you and I think you two are absolutely adorable, but if I find out she's hurting you and you're making excuses for her, there _will_ be blood. Do you understand me?"

Taylor let that statement hang in the air between them.

Victoria visibly mulled Taylor's words over before nodding.

".. That makes sense, T." she said softly. "I don't think it'll come down to that, but it makes sense." Victoria squeezed Taylor's hand and the shorter blonde sat up and stretched, her tank top riding up a bit in the front.

"I'm gonna go take a shower, and when I get back I can pick on you about your new _girlfriend_ some more while you pretend to hate Netflix dramas. Sound good?" Taylor asked as she stood up and brought her now-hot Dr. Pepper to the minifridge.

"That works for me." Victoria replied, standing up as well. "I'm probably going to text Courtney and tell her to come here when she gets out of her movie with Hayden so we can get this costume party finalized."

Taylor's eyes immediately lit up at the prospect of a girl's night.

Victoria groaned.

"It goes without saying that Courtney can't know about all of this yet, right? Telling her is the same as telling the entire school, and I want to do this the _right_ way, you know?" Victoria said, trying very hard to convey her seriousness despite her embarrassment.

Taylor just mock-saluted as she stepped to the door.

"You're the boss, boss." she said.

The door closed behind her, and Victoria dropped backwards onto the bed.

Unfortunately, doing so jostled the laptop just enough that whatever godawful mistake Netflix thought needed to be the next big teen drama resumed its assault on Victoria's fragile mental state.

The five seconds of bad acting she had to endure as she crawled to the laptop to pause the video were enough to make her seriously consider hurling the entire setup out the window for Samuel to deal with.

It took every spare ounce of restraint she had available, but Victoria managed to reign herself in long enough to do what had to be done.

Taylor's laptop would survive another day.

"I, however, might not.. " she mumbled to herself as she worked on composing her text to Courtney.

She whispered a quick prayer for good luck to whoever was listening before she hit Send.

Victoria figured she'd need all the help she could get on this one.

* * *

Max's phone buzzed in her lap. An idle tap revealed it was Kate telling her she was out of the shower and was ready for their mostly-weekly tea date.

_Perfect timing, actually.  
_

Max stepped to her windowsill and after a quick check for any strange boys peeking around corners at her from outside the dorms _-thankfully clear-_ she tipped some water into Lisa's pot from the large bottle she kept nearby.

She'd need to change her pot soon, actually. Lisa was getting big.

She smiled softly to herself as she turned and picked up her guitar, making sure the fresh square of gauze she had put over the marks on her cheek was applied correctly as she did so. Seeing everything was in order, she exhaled a calming breath and stepped out of her door and into the hallway.

Farther down the hallway closer to the stairs she saw Taylor Christensen step out of her own room and notice her. Max froze momentarily and then waved shyly before things had a chance to get awkward somehow.

Taylor stuttered to a stop as well and seemed almost to be _evaluating_ her, though it was hard to be sure from as far away as they were. Even so, after a moment or two Taylor waved back mostly energetically as she walked towards the showers and Max turned to knock evenly on Kate's door, guitar in hand.

Max heard shuffling from the far side of the room and the roll of a latch unlocking as the door was pulled open.

Kate's room smelled like apple shampoo and chamomile tea.

Perfect.

Kate's smile reached all the way up to her eyes as she tugged Max wordlessly into her room by the sleeve of her shirt and pushed the door shut with her foot.

Max saw the other girl's eyes linger questioningly on the bandage on Max's cheek as they crossed the short distance to the table in the center of Kate's room.

"It's just a scratch, Kate. Don't worry." Max laughed as she brushed her fingertips across the material of the bandage.

She heard Kate click her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she leaned down to unlatch Alice's cage.

"You just can't catch a break, Max.. " Kate sad softly as she plopped her rabbit in Max's lap and sat down next to the brunette on the floor.

Max's hands immediately found their way into Alice's fur and she smiled to herself, leaning a little against Kate for support.

"It's not as bad as you'd think, really." She said quietly as Kate reached forward to pull the kettle off the electric burner.

Kate's gentle 'hmm' was all the response she needed to continue.

"We've all had a really bad week, Kate.." She said.

-a tear stained note that _shouldn't exist_ -

Max's arm wound across Kate's shoulder and pulled them closer together.

Kate relaxed as much as she could while pouring hot tea into two delicate cups, but the moment she set the kettle back on the holder and had a free hand she returned Max's hug.

Max's eyes closed and all she could smell was Kate's apple shampoo.

"Don't scare me like that again, okay?" Max whispered as her other arm came around to better hold the other girl against her.

Max felt Kate's breath hitch against her chest and the small muscles across her shoulders tense as she burrowed into Max's neck, but no tears fell. Max just leaned both of them against the foot of Kate's couch and rubbed soft circles into the other girl's back as she decompressed.

After a minute or so of slow, steady breathing, Max squeezed Kate one more time and reached forward and grabbed her teacup off the table.

"Have you heard the good news, sister?" Max joked lightly over the steam wafting from her cup of tea.

Kate exhaled through her nose and softly shook her head.

"I'm not a Jehova's Witness, Max."

Max smiled, inwardly glad that Kate got her dumb joke, but mostly out of genuine happiness.

"I've heard from a reliable source that everything's going to be alright."

Max carefully sipped at her tea.

Kate arched an eyebrow, reserved but intrigued.

"And you believed them?" She asked archly as she reached for own cup, sparing a moment to rub Alice between her ears on her way over.

Max blushed uncharacteristically, but she nodded nonetheless.

"I do." Max said, with all the conviction she could muster as she returned her cup to the table.

Max's confidence was contagious and after a moment a matching smile bloomed like wildflowers across Kate's own face.

"Now let me show you what I've been practicing from that band you showed me!" Max said eagerly as she reached behind her for her guitar.

Kate's eyes widened and she leaned forward, excited.

"Oh, what song did you pick?" Kate asked as she pulled Alice into her lap with one hand and picked up a strawberry from the bowl on the table with the other.

"'Shepherd's Clock', now hush before you make me nervous! This one's hard.. " Max grumbled around the guitar pick she held in her mouth as her fingers alternated between strumming the strings of her guitar and twisting the tuning keys until she was satisfied.

She spat the pick into her waiting hand with a self-assuredness that Kate thought quite contrasted the doubt she had in herself just moments before, but when Max finally brought the little plastic triangle across the strings of her guitar and Kate's room was once again filled with music for the first time in what felt like forever, all of that fell away.

If Max was even half as confident in her as she was the instrument she held in her hands, Kate felt safe trusting her when she said that everything was going to be okay.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks. If there are any typos I missed I'll correct them in the next day or two and cringe over every single one I find. Trust me.
> 
> With this, we're over the big 25k mark. That's a milestone for me, and I hope we see a few more of them before this story's finished. Next week's update might be delayed a few days due to my birthday and personal scheduling, but if it -is- delayed, I'll make the chapter a bit longer to compensate. In general, updates will be weekly, posted between Wednesdays and Fridays, as scheduling allows.
> 
> If a Friday ever rolls around and I don't update, check my profile here on Ao3 for information. I post progress reports there throughout the week, so keep your eyes peeled.
> 
> Chapter 5: 'Shepherd's Clock' will bring us closer to a bit of plot and some of the themes I haven't hit yet. Sleepy/Emotional Max is really fun to write from a technical standpoint due to how abstract her PoV can get, and Victoria/Taylor scenes are some of my favorites because of how far away from me Taylor's character can run.
> 
> Getting the gang together in the next few chapters is going to be nice.
> 
> Anyway, love you guys and sorry for the long A/N. Review, Favorite, PM, and all that jazz. There really aren't words for how happy all of your comments make me.
> 
> Love ya'll,
> 
> alt_


	5. Shepherd's Clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cut this one in half to end the wait. Lots of tea in there. Have fun.

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

5

* * *

Max wasn't sure what Alice Marsh's opinion on acoustic guitar and violin duets was, but if the rabbit's strawberry-smeared sleepy expression was anything to judge by, she figured the flopped-over and almost catatonic bunny couldn't be _t_ _oo_ uncomfortable.

It had taken her a while to figure out how she and Kate could play together considering how different their instruments were, but it turned out that having Kate's violin play the vocal line while Max's guitar played lead sounded about as good as Kate playing lead and Max covering rhythm and singing the vocals did, as long as she knew the words.

So that's what they'd do.

Tea with Kate was generally a few hours of happily passing songs back and forth between each other interspersed with idle chatter and occasionally Max teaching Kate a few chords to play on the church guitar for her youth group.

'Occasionally', because Kate was actually a _crazy good_ musician. If the dirty-blonde girl wasn't more passionate about drawing, she could have easily made her way into Blackwell on a scholarship with her violin alone.

Even a week without Balmorhea's slow strings bringing in the sunset should have been enough of a clue for Max to have known something was _wrong-_

She fumbled, her guitar-pick slipping out of her grasp as her fingers tightened around it awkwardly.

She watched it drop in half a daze, letting the botched chord ring out into the now mostly silent room. Kate's violin had stopped, too.

The other girl was looking at her from her perch on the corner of the couch with a conflicted expression on her face. Kate seemed to make a decision; setting her bow on the pillow at her side and standing, pausing only to set Alice safely onto a bundle of blankets.

Max shook herself out of her daze and smiled wanly at the approaching girl, but Kate wasn't deterred. She knelt down across from Max with a knowing expression on her face, smoothed out the surface of her skirt, and _l_ _ooked_ at her.

"Kate, it's fine, I just-" Max began, but Kate shook her head disbelievingly.

"Max, I know what _this_ looks like, so please don't play ignorant with me." She said, rocking sideways off her ankles and onto her backside to settle a bit more comfortably on the floor.

Kate exhaled softly and rested her hand across Max's, stilling the fingers the brunette was anxiously tapping against the face of her guitar.

"You of all people should know it's not healthy to internalize this much." Kate said softly, trying to find Max's eyes through the dark sway of her fringe.

"I do, Kate.." Max said, then paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.

"It's just-" She huffed, harsh and sharp- "I know it's a cliche to think that nobody could understand, but _really_ , Kate.."

Max sighed.

_Why does being open have to be so hard?_

She took the luxury of a slow, deep breath before she continued.

"There are just so many things, -completely _normal_ things- that I can hear or see or _think_ and it's like my brain just turns off and I feel like I'm trapped in my own skin or something." Max said, trying very hard to keep the anxiety out of her tone.

Kate's warm grip on her hand tightened briefly.

Max swallowed hard and kept speaking before she could lose her nerve.

".. Except that's not what it really feels like." She said. "Something happens to set me off and I get this wild urge to do something to _fix_ it, except most of the time nothing's really wrong and there's nowhere for the anxiety to go except-"

" _-In._ " Kate said at the same time Max did.

".. Yeah." Max mumbled, focusing on the hand holding hers.

"It goes _in_ , and then I'm staring at a bathroom door or a selfie or latex gloves or just fucking dirt under my fingernails feeling like someone walked over my grave and something deep inside my head is absolutely _convinced_ that whatever mundane thing I made the mistake of glancing at is somehow a threat to my life and everyone I care about." Max said, her voice heavy and hot with something she couldn't quite put to words.

The hand that Kate wasn't holding in her own slid up to her face and over her eyes. When Max continued, the heat in her voice was replaced with a frustrated sort of exhaustion.

".. Except five seconds later, when I can actually _breathe_ again, I realize I'm having a fucking panic attack because of a storm on TV and everything drains away except the anxiety and the knowledge that I'm losing it over things that don't make sense to anyone but me and I-"

"Max." Kate interrupted, bringing her other hand up to tug the hand she was subconsciously bringing into her hair back down and onto her lap.

Max looked at her, finally.

Kate's expression was equal parts understanding and concerned.

"Max, you definitely have some sort of post-traumatic disorder-"

-Max laughed-

" -but that's not the only thing going on." Kate finished, not liking the look on the brunette's face.

"You seem to think the people that care about you have to understand what you're going through to be sympathetic, but that's not true." Kate said. "I don't have to have walked the exact same path as you to want to walk down it _with_ you, Max. I care about you, and I think that's enough."

Max heard Kate's voice break a little around her words and felt her eyes sting.

"Kate-" Max began, but was cut off as Kate continued.

"I know you know that too, Max." She said, pressing both of Max's hands together to hold them more easily.

"If you really believed that, then you wouldn't have felt comfortable helping me the way you did."

Max felt Kate's grip tighten, as if the blonde girl was trying to keep her from backing away.

"I think it's just something convenient you're telling yourself so you can justify not reaching out for help."

Max flinched.

"As long as you tell yourself that someone has to understand your situation to help you through it, all you have to do to justifiably deny yourself help is to not _let_ people understand."

Kate's voice was firmer, now.

"I think a part of you believes you _deserve_ to be miserable. That's common with survivor's guilt, because it's easy to want to blame yourself for what happened as a way to try to atone for mistakes you feel like you made."

Max opened her mouth to respond, but Kate kept going.

"You've gone through hell, Max. Even still, you found time to help me through everything that I was dealing with, so the last thing anyone needs is you refusing the same help you were willing to give to others because you think your feelings aren't appropriate or valid. I don't pretend to know everything that's happened to you, but I _do_ know what intrusive thoughts and self-hatred look like." Kate said, her eyes not leaving Max's own for an instant.

"Beating yourself up doesn't change the past or make the future a better place. There's no amount of pain you can let yourself suffer before it'll feel like enough that you can love yourself again. _Trust me, Max_ -"

-She saw something wet spill down Kate's cheeks from the corner of her eye-

" _Trust me_ when I tell you that that kind of hate burns you out and only dies when there's nothing left for it to feed on. It only dies once it's taken everything keeping _you_ alive, too."

Kate's grip on her hands was almost desperate.

Max bit her lip, paused, and then nodded her head softly.

"I understand, Kate." She said. "It's just hard to feel like what I'm feeling is _real_ when it's the smallest things that tear me down. I _know_ it's not right to blame myself, and it's not fair to you or anybody else if I push you away just to curl up in a ball somewhere." Max pulled one of her hands out of Kate's grip to settle on Alice, who had wandered over towards them as though she could feel the stress in the room.

"I really do believe everything is going to be okay, I just _really_ want to be done with this week, Kate."

Max leaned back on the floor and stared at the ceiling, breathing slowly through her nose as she sighed.

She missed Chloe's ceiling; anarchist graffiti and all.

_Fuck_

Without breaking her unseeing lock on the dappled tile above her, she scooped Alice's warm and fuzzy form up and set her down on her chest. The little rabbit didn't seem to take too much of an issue with the change of scenery if her relaxed flop onto her side meant anything.

_Can't I just be a rabbit for a day or two? Is that too much to ask?_

Max laughed softly to herself. Alice's nose twitched as she was jostled a bit by the sudden rise of Max's chest, but quickly settled back down.

"Hey Kate?" Max's head tiredly rolled to look at the blonde girl at her side as she reached into her purse for a pack of tissues.

Kate turned at the sound of Max's voice with a questioning look on her face.

"Can I trade spots with Alice for like, a week? I promise I'll behave."

Kate sniffed and shook her head as she laughed bemusedly.

"I don't think Alice's cage is big enough for you, but you can sleep over if you want. She looks too comfortable to disturb right now, honestly." Kate said, gesturing over her shoulder at the very sleepy bunny that was using the natural terrain of Max's chest as bedding.

_Alice did look really sleepy.._

"Thanks, Kate." Max said as her phone quietly buzzed somewhere off the her side. "I really didn't mean to come in and drop all of this mess on you-"

Kate muttered a denial as she rummaged through her closet for a spare pillow and blanket for Max. It was only around sundown, but it was _also_ never too early to get comfortable on a slow Saturday evening.

Max carefully reached out and took the pillow Kate was handing to her, pushing it under her neck as softly as she could to not disturb the sleeping rabbit on her chest before she spoke up again.

"I'm really not trying to be a big ball of sad." Max said as she blindly fumbled to find her phone. "Every now and then I just get ambushed by things that really shouldn't mess with me as much as they do, and then I feel dumb that something that small got a reaction out of me is all.." Max trailed off, flushing slightly.

Kate pulled a bottle of water out of her minifridge and took a sip, swallowed, and then responded.

"It's not stupid, Max. It's trauma. You're not actually scared of the things that trigger you; not directly, at least. It's what they remind you of that you're actually afraid of."

Kate looked meaningfully at the bottle of water she held in her hand.

"I know a thing or two about dumb triggers, Max." She said, crushing the now empty bottle maybe a _bit_ more forcefully than she needed to before dropping it somewhat more evenly into her recycling bin.

"I can't drink out of anything I didn't open myself anymore, and even then if I've taken my eyes off of it for any amount of time my throat locks up and I physically can't swallow." Kate confessed as she sat down on her bed.

"My point is, don't focus too hard on the little things that remind you of the big things. Be aware of them, but don't take them personally if they set you off. They're just a symptom of a bigger issue."

Max thought that over, and honestly it made sense.

"One of the seniors I eat lunch with at the center is a World War Two veteran, and he's told me some things that people had told him over the years about dealing with PTSD. One of the biggest things for him was that he couldn't go celebrate the 4th of July with his grandchildren because the fireworks didn't agree with him. He _knew_ they were just fireworks, but still he'd have the same response. It hurt his pride to know that he, a man that had jumped out of airplanes on the other side of the world for his country, could be brought down by bottle rockets thirty years later."

Max nodded in understanding and Kate continued.

"The way he explained it to me, it took a therapist that had served through Vietnam and who he could relate with breaking things down sort of like we just did. It wasn't the fireworks; not really at least. It was the fire in the sky, the concussion in his chest, and having people that looked up to him under his care that kept bringing him back to Europe. It's _okay_ to be scared, when you look at it that way."

Kate adjusted her position on the bed.

"It didn't immediately fix his issues, but it did give him some context. He understood what was likely to trigger an episode, but more importantly he knew _why_. His body was telling him to protect his grandchildren from a threat he had experienced before, which is fine. The issue was that it was happening at an inappropriate time. That was a lot more palatable to him than just being afraid of fireworks."

Max swallowed.

"I'm not a hero though, Kate.." She said quietly as her eyes unfocused.

"I'm just a girl afraid of flickering lightbulbs and the way gunpowder smells."

_And black-rimmed glasses and bright white lights and duct tape and medical alcohol and -needles-_

Her jagged exhale was enough to wake Alice up.

Could she not go five minutes without flashing back to that fucking room?

No.

She was safe. Kate was safe. Victoria was safe.

_-Chloe was-_

_No._

Arcadia Bay was whole. Chloe had asked her to go back herself.

All that was left was to keep moving forward as best they could, and never take even a minute for granted.

Max's right hand itched like there were ants underneath her skin, but they moved slower than usual. There wasn't any pressure in her head like there usually was when her reflex told her to rewind, either.

She looked at her hand, slightly curled on the carpet at her side.

She hadn't used her power since she had merged into this timeline fully on Friday. A part of her _still_ wasn't sure what the source of the Storm was.

It was either Chloe herself, or the use of the rewind. All she knew was that not using her power to save Chloe resulted in no storm hitting the Bay and killing everyone else.

_What fucking grudge did the world have against Chloe Price?_

Max's hand balled into a tight fist and the muscle in her jaw tensed, but she was careful not to grind her teeth together or lose control of herself.

This anger was conscious and _hers._

Alice sneezed and Kate looked up from the notebook in her lap towards her rabbit with both eyebrows raised, then down to Max's clenched fist.

Max followed her gaze and blanched a bit.

"It was the ceiling this time." Max offered with a sigh.

Kate nodded like it was the most rational thing in the world and spoke.

"Sometimes flicking my light on in the morning too suddenly gets to me."

"The flash, yeah. Me too." Max mumbled idly as she occupied her right hand with stroking Alice back to sleep.

She completely missed Kate's puzzled look.

".. Yeah. It's the flash that does it." Kate said quietly, seeming to become lost in though for a moment. A question rose in her throat, but caught on something before it reached her mouth. Instead, it escaped over her lips as a wordless sigh.

She tried again.

"Max? If you'd- I mean.." Max looked up as Kate uncharacteristically stalled in the middle of her sentence, her expression uncertain.

Max was confused.

"What's up?" She asked, careful not to alarm Alice.

Kate just chewed her lip nervously.

".. You know you can tell me anything, right?" She said.

-Something in her tone-

_Oh, no._

Max's stomach turned.

_Did Kate think she'd.. ?_

_There_ was the too-familiar pressure in her head.

Right on fucking time. Her hand was on _fire._

_No, Max._

She was very careful to keep her breathing steady as she turned to look at the blonde girl on the bed.

Kate's expression was equal parts concerned and alarmed. There was a little curiosity and horror in there too, but that was a given.

Max knew from experience that Kate was _very_ trustworthy, and surprisingly willing to break rules if she thought it would help Max in a meaningful way. The conversation they'd had regarding breaking and entering into Nathan Prescott's room had told her everything she'd needed to know on that front.

That wasn't the issue.

If Max told Kate about the Dark Room, she'd have to explain -how- she knew, probably.

First problem: Max didn't want to lie to Kate.

Second problem: Even if she told Kate the truth, there wasn't exactly a way to do so without telling her the _whole_ truth, time travel and all.

She had told Chloe almost immediately, so that wasn't really the problem. The _problem_ was doing so without proof.

She felt confident opening up to Chloe because, first of all, it was _Chloe_ , but also because she could -prove- everything she said even if Chloe refused to believe her.

She'd be asking Kate to take it on faith.

Kind of ironic.

She was stalling.

Max blinked, letting her eyes stay shut a little bit longer than they had needed to for a multitude of reasons before she opened them again and met Kate's own searching gaze.

"It's complicated.." Max said, wishing she was closer to the blonde girl so she could hug her or at least squeeze her hand. Kate looked like she was going to say something, so Max kept talking.

"I don't want to hide things from you, Kate. You're the most trustworthy person I know, really. There's just.. a lot of what I'd have to tell you would make me sound crazy if I didn't sort it out for myself first, you know?" Max said, trying very hard not to succumb to her habit of nervous laughter. The last thing she needed was Kate thinking she'd snapped or something.

Fuck it. She needed contact for this.

Being very careful not to traumatize the bunny on her chest, she pushed herself upright and wandered towards Kate's spot on the bed and sat down with a tired huff. She placed Alice down next to them and pulled Kate's hand into her own.

There. Perfect.

"If there's anyone here I can talk to about anything, it's you, Kate." Max said with a soft sort of confidence. "Trust me when I say that you'll be the first to know after I figure it out for myself?"

Kate's eyebrows furrowed together momentarily but after some consideration, she nodded.

"Alright, Max. I'll trust you." She said, before reconsidering. "I'll trust you, as long as you aren't intentionally hurting yourself."

She gestured towards the bandage on Max's cheek and up towards her hairline.

_Was something visible on her scalp? What the hell?_

Max flushed, but conceded. Kate's concerns were valid, even if they weren't exactly on the right track.

They were a convenient segue into something she could actually explain, too.

Max peeled the bandage off and dropped it into the wastebin next to Kate's bed before turning back to the blonde girl at her side.

Kate brought both her hands to her mouth to cover her gasp.

Max laughed.

"It's actually not what it looks like." Max said plainly.

"What _happened?_ " Kate managed through her shock, one hand reaching forward towards Max's face without quite touching the marks there.

"Would you believe I got into a fight?" Max asked, idly tracing the fissures in her lips with her fingertips. Kate followed the movement and her eyes widened even more than they already had been.

"Are you being bullied?" Kate asked, and this time Max's sharp laugh was just a bit too much to disguise as a forceful exhale.

Max shook her head.

"I started it, actually."

"With _who?_ "

"Who else?" Max asked rhetorically.

Kate paused while Max's words caught up with her.

All at once, they came together.

"You really- _Her.. ?_ "

Kate was beyond bewildered at this point.

"Mhmm." Max confirmed. "I called Victoria a bunch of mean things until she punched me, and then I hit her back."

Max saw something else come together in Kate's head.

"Victoria's eye.. That was you, wasn't it?" Kate's mouth fell open in shock. "Max you could be _expelled_ for that! You know how awful she can be, _especially_ about you."

Max shrugged.

"It actually worked out better than I'd hoped, really. We talked things out afterwards and we have a bit of an understanding now." Max said as her phone buzzed twice back to back from its spot on the floor.

"She probably won't be at my throat in public anymore is what I'm trying to say, I guess."

_Wait.._

Max blushed heavily as her unintentional wordplay clicked together, but covered by standing to go get her phone from the floor.

_Speak of the devil.._

3 Unread from -'Tori-

Max looked back at Kate as soon as her flush had calmed to something more disguisable.

"She still hasn't paid her dues for her part in what happened to you, you know." Max said.

She liked Victoria, but the girl had a vicious streak a mile wide.

Kate looked down at her lap and didn't say anything for a few moments.

Max was content to just let the dirty-blonde girl process for as long as she needed to.

After only a few seconds though, Kate looked up and exhaled.

"Actually, she talked to me right after the funeral.. "

_Oh?_

"She apologized for doing what she did. In her words, she didn't know I was drugged and didn't believe her friend when she said she was skeptical that I was acting the way I was from just alcohol." Kate said.

She swallowed.

"She didn't go too deeply into detail, but Victoria said she'd requested the video be taken down as soon as everything with Nathan and Mr. Jefferson came out. I told her that didn't change the fact she'd tried to _ruin_ me, but you know what she said when I told her that?" Kate asked.

Max quietly shook her head and considered how well she really knew Victoria Chase.

"She said that she knew it didn't work that way. She wanted to take responsibility for putting the worst moment of my life online for the world to see, and never denied what she did or what her intentions were. She told me she didn't want me to forgive her. She just wanted me to know that _she_ knew she had fucked up."

Max winced at Kate's language and Kate laughed under her breath.

"Her words, not mine."

Max looked down at the phone in her hands as it buzzed _again._

4 Unread from -'Tori-

Max looked back up to Kate.

"Was that enough for you?" she asked.

Kate just raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"I mean, _do_ you forgive her? If you don't, I can always march over there and finish what I started. I already know who wins that fight, Kate." Max said, completely deadpan as she gestured through the wall towards Victoria's room.

Kate immediately went pale and Max made a show of casually inspecting her fingernails, her expression entirely blank.

Alice, who had been forgotten up to that point, made the _s_ _trangest_ little noise from her spot on the bed and Max couldn't maintain her composure anymore. Her expression cracked, and the moment Kate realized she was joking, the other girl started cracking up too.

Max let her momentum carry her back down to Kate's bed and for a while she let herself just enjoy the sound of Kate laughing. After a moment or two the pair of them wound down into a comfortable silence.

_Kate's ceiling wasn't so intimidating after all._

Max's smile was a small, grateful thing.

Eventually, Max brushed her hand across Kate's knee to get her attention and when the other girl looked at her from her spot towards the head of the bed, Max cleared her throat and spoke.

"You know, I was only half joking." Max said, and Kate looked at her in mild alarm.

"Not like that, Kate. I meant I'd talk to her about not being such an attack-dog all the time if you wanted me to."

Kate considered Max's proposal for a moment before nodding to herself.

"I'm not sure how much of the way she was acting was specific to me and how much was just 'regular Victoria', but I'd really appreciate it if everyone could just get along." Kate said, sounding like she wasn't sure exactly how realistic her desires were.

Knowing Victoria though, well..

Max would try her best.

_Speaking of which_

Max's finger reflexively slid through her phone's unlock pattern so she could finally read those texts.

 **-'Tori-:** _Gonna be talking over Vortex stuff with Thing 1 and Thing 2 until late tonight so if you text me and I don't reply right away, that's probably why. Lunch tomorrow?_

Sent a little while after Victoria had given her that burger earlier that morning. The two that had arrived back to back a few minutes ago were a good deal less well-constructed than the first.

_Was Victoria drunk?_

**-'Tori-:** _R you okay max? if that girl did anything to you so help me there will b blood_

 **-'Tori-:** _only kind of kidding_

Victoria was _totally_ drunk. And was she jealous of Kate?

_Kate? No way is she scared of -Kate- of all people_

Max felt her cheeks heat up and a grin made its way onto her face of its own accord.

She looked up to find something to focus on that wasn't the dumb girl on her phone and froze like the proverbial deer in headlights.

Kate Marsh was staring at her with another one of those _looks._

That wasn't good, so Max looked back down at her phone to read that last text.

 **-'Tori-:** _Hi Max, Victoria is a mess right now so I took her phone before she could embarrass herself any further. Cute pic btw ;) -T_

Max's flush changed hue as she realized more fully that there was indeed no escape from the hell she had fallen into.

She swallowed.

_'Path of least resistance', Max.._

She looked back up at Kate and returned the girl's expectant stare with a nervous smile of her own and had to fight herself not to bring a hand up to rub the back of her head in embarrassment.

No hesitation. She had to play this quick or Kate would get _ideas-_

"Did Warren send you something nice, Max?" Kate asked demurely, her hands folded primly on her lap.

Max's revolted wince was immediate and sharp.

Something flickered behind Kate's eyes and just the _tip_ of a smirk played across the corner of her mouth for only a moment.

Max paled.

_Clever girl.._

She coughed -trying to somehow kick start her brain- but to no effect.

"I.. can explain?"

 _Dog_ that sounded lame even to her.

Kate sat up completely, -careful not to jostle poor Alice-, slipped out of bed to go start her electric kettle, and then made towards the drawer where she kept her good jasmine.

"That's wonderful, Max. Order something to eat if you don't mind while I get the tea ready, please?" she said over her shoulder in a way that was polite, but also made clear that she wasn't _really_ asking.

When Kate turned back around and Max could see the amusement mixed in with the, well, _everything else,_ on the other girl's face, the nervous knot her stomach had turned itself into loosened somewhat. Not nearly enough to be _comfortable_ per-se, but definitely better than the absolute doom she was feeling even five seconds before.

Still, no matter how well or poorly the rest of the night went, it'd definitely be an -interesting- conversation.

Max moved to comply with Kate's soft-but-definitely-still-absolute demands and did her best to ensure that her anxious groan stayed internal.

_Fuck._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They know~
> 
> Alright. Sorry for the delay. This kept growing and growing to get it where I initially wanted it to be, and I realized that at the pace I was writing at we'd be around eleven-thousand words or so by the time I resolved the first in-class scene I initially wanted to end this one on, so I cut it in half at a sensible stopping point and moved the rest to the start of Chapter 6: Bowsprit.
> 
> Life has picked up randomly, but I'll still be posting somewhere between weekly and biweekly, but closer to Fridays than Wednesdays now. Also, 'White Dust' is ending soon and I don't know how to feel /blog
> 
> Happy late Valentines Day and I love y'all
> 
> alt_


	6. Bowsprit

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

6

* * *

The door to her room clicked shut behind her; the firm knock of heavy oak on the metal of the doorframe doing quite a bit more to wake her up than the quick cup of coffee in Kate's room had. There was a sort of finality to the sound that had been absent from the air of the other girl's room. Kate's room could only ever be _Kate's Room-_ there was just a level of comfort that existed there that was absent from everywhere else on Blackwell's campus.

Well, Kate's room and under the sinks in the bathroom, as absurd as that last one was.

-And Chloe's bedroom-

_Yes, Intrusive Voice. Chloe's room felt good too. Now fuck off._

Being alone in her own room again set her the slightest bit on-edge, but that wasn't entirely a bad thing.

Max balled up her oversized teeshirt, lined up her hamper from across the room, and shot.

_Swish_

She grinned.

Life was about the little things sometimes.

Little things, like texting first for once.

Bad habits and all.

Max's thumb idly swept over her screen without paying too much attention to the movement as she stepped over to Lisa, trying to remember whether or not she'd watered her the day before. She brushed the hand that wasn't busy bringing up the newest name in her contacts list over Lisa's soil gingerly, nodding to herself when she saw that no dirt had stuck to her skin.  
  
_Not too dry. Perfect._

Sufficiently sure that her dear child would survive another day, Max finally felt comfortable enough to _stop stalling and text Victoria-_

 **Max:** _Is Taylor still alive or am I helping you move some trash bags today_

_Hey thanks, Intrusive Voice_

Was it really toxicity if you were mostly just bullying yourself into being productive?

Max pondered that for a moment before writing it off as a question for Kate the next time they hung out. She'd probably know.

Max's internal monologue was stalled somewhat by her phone buzzing in her hand.

 **-'Tori-:** _What kind of amateur-hour shit is that Caulfield_  
**-'Tori-:** _We do the whitecollar blackmail thing around here. Way less messy._

That actually made sense. Victoria didn't seem the murder-y type, honestly. 'Mean Girls'-brand blackmail and social extortion were definitely more her speed. Max was halfway through a text explaining her thoughts on the matter while she got her own shower stuff together when another message shook her phone.

 **-'Tori-:** _We'll talk about contingencies for Sweet T going rogue after you decide where you're taking me for lunch_

That was actually a great question. There were basically two places in Arcadia Bay to eat that weren't the "hella jank" McDonald's just off the highway. They'd both eaten Fugly Bob's yesterday, and Max wasn't really ready to talk to Joyce yet, no matter how well-aligned her visit with Kate had left her feeling.

There wasn't a kitchen on campus outside of the Home Ec. room, and Max was leery about commandeering Kate's hot-plate as an improvised stovetop for an even more improvised lunch for two.

She stood from her nest on the couch and looked out the window -no Warren staring into her room from behind that corner this morning, thank Dog- as inspiration struck from somewhere towards the sunstreaked, misty horizon.

She had hardly finished typing before the overwhelming urge to erase everything came over and _nope Max just send the damn text-_

 **Max:** _How does Portland sound?_

There. That wasn't so hard.

_And now we wait._

She didn't have to wait long.

 **-'Tori-:** _Portland? You sure you can make it an hour and a half alone in a car with me without going for my throat?_

Max's tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth in mild frustration.

This girl..

 **Max:** _If we can't do a short car ride then I don't know how we could expect anything more than_

 **Max:** _wait that was innuendo wasn't it_

Victoria's reply came entirely too quickly for Max's taste. 

**-'Tori-:** _Innuendo? Moi? I'm sure I have no idea what you mean, Maxine._

They were going to have to have a discussion about Victoria abusing her unfair morning-person advantage in the future.

 **-'Tori-:** _Absolutely baseless attacks on my character aside, Portland sounds fine to me. Have you been before?_

Not since before she left Arcadia to move to Seattle, and even then it had been years, so she told Victoria as much.

 **Max:** _I think I was 8 or so. Mom and Dad took me and Chloe to the Zoo. It was uh.._

Chloe had tried to convince her to help steal a parrot. They allegedly needed it for 'Pirate Things'. Mom didn't understand, so they snuck a rubber snake into her purse on the car ride home. 

That was a good day, minus all the screaming.

 **Max:** _It was kind of a total scene if I'm being honest. I'll tell you about it on the way up?_

Talking about things was good, right?

 **-'Tori-:** _It's a date. Meet me in the parking lot at 11:00-ish and we'll figure the rest out in the car_

That was a little more than three hours from now. Max looked at her shower-bag tipped over on her bed, then out through the window and over the trees and towards the orange smear of sun that hadn't yet completely risen out of the early mist blanketing the bay. 

She glanced back down at her bed -this time towards her very soft pillows- and weighed her options.

_Shower, or nap?_

The eternal struggle.

Her phone buzzed twice back-to-back and then chimed shortly afterward. The buzzes were texts.

The chime meant an image file.

_Ominous_

'No, Max, you're being dramatic.' She rationalized. 'It's too early in the morning for this to be anything but completely innocuous.'

Swallowing her sudden hesitation, she unlocked her phone again with a nervous flick of her thumb.

 **-'Tori-:** _Fair warning, Sweet T said she'll kill you if you can't learn to keep your hands to yourself_

 **-'Tori-:** _How's it look btw?_

Enclosed was a shot that was so high-resolution that Max had to watch her phone grind to a halt trying to load it all. 

Even the camera on Victoria's _phone_ was better than anything Max had used before.

When it had finally downloaded completely, Max's phone took the liberty of diving into the image headfirst of its own volition. Most of the screen was immediately taken up by a streak of pink that was slightly glossy under the shot's lighting. Utterly disoriented, Max tapped her screen to zoom out and-

_.. Wowzers.._

It was a high-angled shot starting just a bit above the point of Victoria's nose. A strawberry flush spread from her cheeks down into the dark bind of her sports bra, interrupted only by the half pant/half smirk of the blonde's parted lips and the slightly faded bruise that ringed the refined span of her neck. 

The hand that wasn't busy holding her phone was bunched in the towel she had tossed over one shoulder. Victoria must have had to lean backwards slightly to get the best lighting because a slight sheen of sweat glittered across a stretch of skin towards the dip of her navel.

A particularly adventurous little bead had even been caught mid-slide over the subtle groove of a lower abdominal down towards the waistband of the blonde girl's leggings and-

Max closed her phone with a sharp huff as her hopes of a nap at any time in the near future were dashed in the span of a few hurried heartbeats.

Ironically enough, any attempt at a (cold) shower would now just bring her _closer_ to her current problem.

Her Netflix subscription had run out two days ago, and she'd spent most of last night playing guitar with Kate and her fingertips were _still_ sore.

-You could always take some pictures, Max-

Max froze. A chill rocked through her, sweeping like a frost from the nape of her neck over the ridge of her spine and down the skinny length of her arms to discharge into the air from the raw tips of her fingers.

She consciously reigned in her breathing as she thought to the black-wrapped bundle lying not-so-forgotten in the corner, buried under boxes of old clothes and hidden from sight.

She remembered the click of a shutter.

The whine of the flash grated in her ears like a wire rasp.

She flinched as something seemed to move in her periphery-

_but didn't look_

-towards the polaroids hanging on her wall.

The floor was trying to drop out from underneath her again, so she turned her stagger into something a bit more measured and less of an ungainly reel as she caught herself on her couch.

Max preemptively brought a hand up to her nose and stifled a flinch as she noticed which hand it was. Her eyes slid closed as the fingertips of her left hand grazed the space between her nose and lips.

No blood.

No pressure behind her eyes.

No ants underneath the nails of her right hand and no electric prickle through the fine hairs of her arm.

Nothing here except a regular fucking panic attack.

In the time it had taken her mind to get a grasp of what was happening to her, Max's body had been left on autopilot. The fingers that were moments ago busy stemming a bleed that wasn't there had in the meantime furrowed over her mouth and clamped down, vicelike.

-You know what they say about idle hands, Max-

Had her overhead lights always been so bright? 

There was a sudden sting in her neck-

-Her _hand_ , it was her _hand_ that was stinging-

-and copper on her tongue, from where she had pulled the skin of her palm into her mouth and bitten down.

Her eyes were squeezed shut, the lids crushed together hard enough that little bright shapes squirmed in the corners of her not-vision, but anything was better than either of the alternatives.

Her ears searched out and found something to focus on: the box-fan in her window, audible over the stuttered scrape of her breath through her clenched fingers.

_You're in your room, Max. The fan means you're in your room._

Max's jaw loosened only enough to pull a different stretch of skin over her raw lips and into the bone-white crush of her teeth.

 _I_ _f you open your eyes, you'll see the same whitish ceiling you always have. There's nothing in here to be afraid of._

Bullshit.

Max threw herself onto her side, jerking as the motion jarred her hand from her mouth and another rusty stain streaked her teeth. The residual light that had been making its way through her clenched eyelids guttered out as she buried her face in the crease of the couch where seat met backrest and pressed desperately into the dark gap she found there.

Dark was good. It meant she didn't have to try so hard to keep her eyes closed.

She burrowed in deeper, her pained noises getting lost somewhere in the black of the crevice she loosed them into and the cotton of the throw-blanket that her wriggling had knocked loose from above her and down over her head.

Cotton, and something -no, some _things_ \- that felt like silk and smelled like lavender and faint sweat as they brushed over her cheek to pool in the space between her lips and the faux-leather of the couch cushions.

 _Torn strips of a nightgown.._

The ones Victoria had insisted she take while she left to look for real bandages.

People said scent was the closest sense to memory, and as Max pulled in another breath and felt the steady and calm phantom-beat of a heart on her lips, she was inclined to believe them.

Her exhale was ragged and metallic, but mostly controlled. That was good.

She took another deep breath just to be safe anyway. 

_Okay, this is doable._

Max rolled onto her back, only flinching slightly at the bright light prickling through her eyelids as she rose to her feet and opened her eyes.

Her room was as she had left it. The figures on her wall of polaroids were all as still in their frames as they should be and weren't whispering at her. 

No pressure.

No itch.

_Probably as good as this was going to get, honestly._

Max turned to face the boxes in the corner and bit the proverbial bullet.

She hesitated enough to wind the longest strip of silk around the small tear in her palm first, though. She was taking no chances.

Three quick strides brought her to the pile of boxes and it was the work of moments to unearth the bundle buried underneath them. Max peeled away the black fabric of the dress she wore to the funeral and looked down at the innocuous camera that it had hidden.

Chloe's father's. The Joyce of this timeline had given it to her earlier in the week, a brief flash of memory from the autopilot-Max had informed her.

The lens stared back at her accusingly, but that wasn't where the terror kept coming from. That constant, pervasive unease originated from the little sheets of film inside the plastic husk.

Every single one was a possibility.

A temptation.

Max pointedly didn't think back to the mural of polaroids hanging directly above her bed.

She still didn't know if giving Chloe up was what kept her corner of the world from tearing itself apart, or if it was simply not using her powers that was stopping the storm from just coming back and picking up where it left off.

What Max _did_ know was that if she slipped and looked too hard at any of her pictures- even from her _childhood_ \- and she heard Chloe's carefree laugh in the background, or saw a strand of strawberry-blonde hair catch in a breeze that hadn't blown in over a decade, she'd fucking _snap._

The only thing keeping Max from smashing the camera against the floor was her love for William Price. Not even her fucking _memories_ were safe anymore.

There was a knock on her door, but she ignored it. Kate was at church and Victoria hadn't had enough time to shower yet. Everyone else was secondary, except for Joyce and maybe Step-Sergeant, but they'd have called first. 

Max _very firmly_ set the polaroid camera back down on her bookshelf.

If it was blatantly tilted away from her bed and couch, well, she'd claim it was for feng shui or something.

The knocking hadn't stopped yet, either.

_Whoever they are, they're determined._

Her frustrated huff as she turned towards the door became a steady exhale as she realized she was maybe being a little unnecessarily aggressive. Whoever was knocking on her door wasn't doing it to mess with her. In all likelihood it was probably just Dana or even Warren coming to check up on her. 

Tearing people's heads off at the drop of a hat was Victoria's thing.

Usually.

Max unlocked her door and pulled it open. The blonde girl on the other side of the threshold was one of the last people she had expected to see, but given what had happened last night, Max really shouldn't be too surprised. 

Taylor Christensen batted her eyelashes and smiled as wide as she could manage, which as it turned out, was pretty wide when she didn't have to worry about things like propriety or not being vaguely unsettling. Max had a sneaking suspicion that might actually have been Taylor's goal, but that knowledge didn't do anything to make the other girl's glass-eyed stare or toothy grin any less ominous.

Taylor bounced onto her tiptoes and rocked forward just the slightest bit into Max's personal space before she spoke.

"Hey Max," she said cheerily as she leaned in. "Got a sec to chat?"

She said it like it was a question, but was already through the door and most of the way towards Max's couch before the brunette could put an answer together. 

"Sure, I guess. What's up?" Max said, feeling lame before she finished her sentence.

Taylor didn't seem to notice her cringe however. She was too busy picking up the lengths of torn silk on the ruffled seat of Max's couch.

Max flushed, slightly indignant at the other girl's unabashed nosiness. She then blanched as the irony settled in.

_Is this what it feels like when I do it?_

Max shook her head and moved to pull the door shut behind her. She didn't get how Dana could keep her door open all day long and not go insane. She didn't have long to think about that, however, as Taylor took the brief silence as cue enough to speak up.

"You into scrapbooking now or something, Max?" She said from somewhere off to Max's side. 

Max figured the best way not to lose the psychological warfare game was to keep the blonde girl firmly out of sight so she couldn't do anything to weird her out and wait that was all kinds of stupid what was she _thinking_ -

She quickly turned, making sure to keep a direct line on Taylor at all times.

_There we go. Perfect._

Taylor, to her credit, seemed completely unaware of Max's newfound caution and instead busied herself by looping one of the long bits of fabric around the pinkie finger of her left hand. Max only realized Taylor was waiting for an answer when the leggy blonde met her eyes and quirked an eyebrow inquisitively, glancing momentarily down at the other piece of silk on the seat and over towards the small pile of loose polaroids on the table next to it.

Max had been meaning to let Kate and maybe Victoria pick out any pictures they liked from that stack before she boxed them for the near future. She hadn't meant to leave them just laying out, but then again she hadn't expected to sleep over at Kate's last night or to have a visitor this early either.

Max noticed Taylor was _still_ waiting for an answer and mentally kicked herself.

"Not really," she shrugged, stepping closer to Taylor before she could go rummaging any deeper than she already had. "I cut my hand a few minutes ago and didn't have anything to cover it with, so I improvised."

'Not _entirely_ a lie..' she thought to herself while making a show of flashing her palm at Taylor, letting the other girl see her crude handiwork.

Taylor pursed her lips together for a moment and then shook her head with a small laugh.

"You've been a magnet for injuries these last few days. You sure you're not cursed or something?"

Taylor was joking if the smirk on her face was any indication, but Max wasn't so sure. She let out a tired sigh in response and swept a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.

"I'm not usually this much of a mess, I swear."

That was the truth, too. Max couldn't remember the last time she'd been this, well, _wrecked._

Taylor invited herself to sit down on Max's couch and immediately kicked her slippers off to lay back without messing up the cushions any more than they already were. Taylor yawned, and suddenly Max was reminded that she could have been napping right then.

Taylor bit her yawn off with a wordless grumble before looking at Max's hand again out of the corner of her eye.

"You know, I might not have anything for that cut in my room, but I know Victoria keeps a pretty good first aid kit in hers. " Taylor offered helpfully, bringing a hand up to her chin in thought. 

The tip of Max's tongue flicked across a dry bit of her lower lip and she winced as she irritated one of the small tears there.

"I ah.. think I'll be okay." She said as evenly as she could manage, then continued when she saw Taylor's eyebrow rise in curiosity. It was better to head this off before the other girl could spring whatever trap she had planned.

Max cleared her throat.

"She actually gave me some stuff for my face the night before last, and I'm pretty sure she's busy right now, anyway." Max finished, her tone filled with a nonchalance she didn't actually feel. Even still, whatever calm was present in Max's mind evaporated as Taylor responded. 

"She _is_ busy right now, Max." Taylor said as she sat up and turned to face her. "That's why I'm here."

That eerie smile was back.

Max swallowed.

"It's one hell of a coincidence that you wind up with a busted lip and scratches on your face the same night Victoria turns up with some frankly _wild_ bruises of her own, isn't it?" Taylor asked in a way that couldn't be anything but rhetorical. She arched her back briefly in a stretch and crossed her legs at the ankle before she leaned forward and continued, her expression one of faux-curiosity.

"You know how I spent last night, Max?" She asked and then paused, intentionally giving Max space to respond.

Max, for her part, folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head. 

"How?" She asked, keeping her tone as even as possible. More difficult than it should have been, all things considered.

_She's just worried about her friend, Max. Don't take it personally._

Taylor's fingers laced together in front of her as she perched an elbow on her bare knee.

"I spent last night doing my best to make sure Courtney Wagner didn't find out you _strangled my best friend_ the same way I did. Do you know how much makeup it takes to hide that kind of a bruise in a way that doesn't make it even more conspicuous?"

Max opened her mouth, but apparently Taylor wasn't intent on giving her time to reply anymore.

"But then again, that wasn't the first time I've had to clean up a mess you've made, Max." Taylor stood up, but didn't approach her. Just being eye-to-eye was enough.

"Do you have any idea how _bad_ Victoria has it for you? Or for how _long?_ "

The blatant confusion on Max's face was the only answer Taylor needed. She scoffed and continued.

"I didn't, for the longest time, but in hindsight I don't know how I could have missed it. She's only ever treated one other person the way she's treated you, and that was years ago. Even her thing with Kate was apparently just her being possessive and lashing out like a jealous child at anyone playing with her favorite toy." Taylor shook her head as though she didn't believe what she was saying.

This was all news to Max, but the blonde girl didn't seem like she was ready to stop yet so she remained quiet. Taylor in the meantime had started pacing and needed to turn on her heel to fully face Max again. The expression on her face was tense, from the stress rising in her cheeks to the quiver at the corner of her lips. When she spoke, every ounce of tension was audible in her voice.

"Can you imagine how happy I was when Victoria flopped down on my bed blushing like a schoolgirl trying to play coy about her new crush? Especially after everything that happened this week? Do you have any idea how _long_ I've waited to have that conversation with her, after that _cunt_ Rachel and that fucking nutcase Prescott balled her up and threw her away?" 

Taylor's voice didn't break, but it _bent_ over her words in a way made Max dizzy as they slipped like steam through her teeth.

"I was _ecstatic_ , Max. I was over the fucking moon for her. And then I looked."

Taylor paused, and for several long moments her eyes didn't leave the floor. The only movement across her body was the slow shake of her head.

Finally she looked up, and Max had to look away. Even then, Taylor's ragged voice was enough.

"It was the _same shit_ , Max. Victoria, once again so tied up in someone that she didn't care about the bruises or all the _bullshit_. Do you know how _fucked_ it is to see your best friend smiling at you like nothing's wrong while she gushes about the girl that tore her apart?"

She did.

-Rachel was.. I loved her, Max..-

She remembered a handmade bracelet on Frank Bowers' wrist and a journal full of loveletters hidden in a vent.

She remembered a picture in Mark Jefferson's Dark Room, signed in a flowing girlish script.

_And how many times did you call her, all those years you were in Seattle? At least Rachel never abandoned her, you hypocrite_

Taylor was still speaking, but Max had to do something to get out of her own head or she was going to snap another tooth. She exhaled firmly and stepped forward, close enough to Taylor that she could grab the other girl carefully by the arms. Taylor paused mid-sentence at the sudden contact, so Max took that moment to speak.

"Look, Taylor, trust me when I say I _know_ how unhealthy this could end up being. You're not the only person worried about Victoria, either. I don't know much about what's happened to her in the past, but I _do_ know that I'll do anything I can to make sure another person I care about doesn't have to suffer for my mistakes."

If Taylor thought Max was being figurative when she said 'anything', well.. 

Max took a breath.

"I just- I _get it_ when you tell me you can't stand to see your best friend put herself through the fucking wringer any more."

Max's blue eyes searched out found Taylor's, and she managed to fight down the urge to look away this time.

 _Deep breaths, Max_

She spoke.

"That fight was the result of a lot of pressure that had been building up for a long time, Taylor. I didn't go into that bathroom the other night _intending_ for things to go the way they did, and after everything had happened and it was just me and Victoria just sitting there in the dark, it was just-"

Max brushed her hair out of her face again with a free hand and huffed out a breath.

"It's just, I don't know.. Once someone sees you at your worst, there's not much left to be ashamed of, you know?"

Taylor's lips pursed together, making her look skeptical in an almost aggressive sort of way.

_Just fucking explain yourself, Max_

She took a moment to collect herself before she continued speaking.

"Taylor, you know Victoria a lot better than I do." Max conceded. "You know how singleminded and stubborn she is, and you _know_ that she doesn't always have to focus that on tearing people down."

Max saw something flicker behind Taylor's eyes, so she kept going.

"Victoria could have put a video of me crying my eyes out on Facebook or ran away or even just called the cops after what happened. Most people would have, really. Instead, she sat with me and talked me through it until she knew that I was okay. I figured if I was comfortable enough to ugly-cry into her nightgown on a nasty bathroom floor, I was comfortable enough to tell her she's kinda cute when she's using her evil powers for good, is all."

Max took a deep breath, completely winded, as her head turned to hide some of her flushed expression from view.

In the meantime, the mysterious flicker in the blonde girl's eyes had blossomed into a full blown _f_ _lash_ -

_Oh god, she knew that face_

"So that's when you kissed her?" Taylor said slyly as she abruptly stepped close, firmly into Max's guard in a way that made the brunette slide backwards on reflex. Unfortunately for Max, her bed had left her very little room to maneuver and she was forced to choose between leaning back over it like a weirdo, or just sitting down like a normal human being.

The choice was harder than it should have been, all things considered. 

The springs of Max's mattress groaned underneath her as she dropped down with a muffled -whump- but that just left a smug blonde staring down at her for the third time in as many days and _damn_ was that getting old.

_Initiative, Max. What would Chloe do?_

Max met Taylor's eyes head-on.

"If you don't want me kissing your best friend, then maybe don't have such a hot best friend?" 

In an instant, Taylor went from confident and borderline predatory to absolutely gobsmacked.

Max had to keep talking before what she was saying caught up to her. It was the only way.

"All I'm saying is that it's really easy to see what Victoria has going for her when she's not in the process of verbally gutting you is all."

There we go. A bit less blunt, but still sincere. 

She still hadn't directly answered Taylor's question, though. That wouldn't do at all.

She blushed, but kept speaking nonetheless.

"So yeah, that's when I kissed her." She swallowed, pausing for a moment to run her tongue across suddenly dry lips. Saying it out loud felt strange, but good. She felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward just the slightest bit as she remembered exactly what came after their first brief kiss.

"It wasn't super aggressive or romantic or anything like that. Just a kind-of awkward 'thank you', really." She said, letting her voice drop from its former nervous timbre down into a more level and almost disappointed murmur. Max allowed her eyes to once more fall down towards her lap and her shoulders folded inward a bit as she spoke again, carefully not giving Taylor enough time to interject.

"I actually almost lost it again when she pulled away as fast as she did, to be honest." She confessed somberly. The heavy, frustrated groan she heard from somewhere above her and the awkward shuffle of Taylor's feet against the carpet was all the indication Max needed that the other girl wasn't completely against her on this one.

It was fortunate that Max's fringe was long enough to hide her face from the blonde standing above her. 

"Mhmm.." Max mumbled in agreement with Taylor's awkward shuffle. "I thought I was going to _die._ "

Max huffed, milking the strange stretch of silence as well as she could. Max could tell by the incessant restless shift of Taylor's weight from foot to foot that the girl was uncomfortable and unsure of what exactly to do with herself.

She smirked and looked up.

"And then she kissed me back. A real bodice-ripper, too. Didn't know she had it in her to be honest." Max said, savoring every flicker of emotion across Taylor's shocked face. 

She stood up, brushing past the blonde girl on her way.

"After that she dragged me by the hand back here to my room, threw me onto my bed right -there _-_ , and then we had an _adult discussion about our relationship_ at her very firm request."

Taylor turned to face her. Max smiled.

"It was magical."

There was a silent but tense beat as the last ten or so seconds played and replayed inside Taylor's head. When she spoke, her tone was flat to an almost confrontational extent.

"Bullshit, Max." Taylor said, bringing her hand up to her face in frustrated disbelief as the brunette laughed again.

"Only a little." Max joked as she reached for her phone to check the time. A few minutes after 9:30. Plenty.

She cleared her throat and met Taylor's eyes briefly.

"We really did talk about everything that happened. Long story short, we agreed to keep things tactically unofficial at least until we stopped looking like mascots for a domestic violence awareness campaign."

Max noticed Taylor's mildly scandalized expression and quickly amended her statement- "Her words, not mine."

Technically they'd had that conversation the morning afterwards, but that wasn't the point at all.

Max swallowed.

"Anyway, we're going to Portland for lunch around 11 today and with any luck between now and then we'll figure out our dynamic or something." She shrugged.

Taylor's head tilted to the side. 

"Portland?" She asked. Her curiosity must have overridden her disbelief at some point because the words had barely left her mouth before she was asking another question. "She wanted your first date to be in Portland?"

"My idea, actually. She seemed keen, though." Max said, some of her earlier trepidation returning to her voice as she spoke.

Maybe it _had_ been too soon-

"I like it." Taylor said, nodding her head decisively.

Max's reply was as eloquent as it was profound.

"Huh?"

Taylor's eyebrows puzzled together gently in response.

"No, really. I like it." She said. "It's far enough away to get both of you out of your comfort zones while still being close enough not to be a total disaster if things don't go well."

She seemed to think she'd misspoken, if the hurried waving of her hands in front of her face or the quick flash of embarrassment across her expression were any indication.

"Not that I think things won't go well." She amended swiftly. "I was mostly poking you earlier about Victoria to make sure you understood what all this could look like from an outside point of view; I really think you two are cute together for what it's worth."

Taylor cut off her short tirade with a sharp intake of breath. When she exhaled, she was much more collected.

"Anyway, do you know where you're taking her?" She asked with a leading tone to her voice that Max picked up on immediately. The brunette shook her head slightly.

"I haven't been since I was really little. You have any suggestions?" She said as she smoothed out a spot on her bed to sit down on, then gestured for Taylor to sit down too. The energetic blonde complied immediately, dropping onto the foot of the bed with a bounce, and turned to face Max before replying.

"You've got a few choices, but there are two really good ones." She said, her excitement visible in her eyes. "There's an Italian place in downtown that she really likes, but it's a bit upscale for a first date; the type of place you kinda have to dress up for, y'know?"

Max nodded.

"The other one's a smaller Japanese place about a block from the waterfront, but Victoria's a huge sushi snob so unless you wanna be called some sort of weeaboo slur, I'd advise sticking to nigiri or sashimi and avoiding rolls and spicy-mayo altogether."

Max nodded again, trying very hard to look like she understood more than half of what Taylor had said that time.

She wasn't as smooth as she thought she was, apparently, because Taylor shook her head and brushed a stray lock of hair behind and ear idly with a lightly exasperated huff.

"They've got other stuff too if you're not really a fish person, but I'd still recommend asking her to pick out something for you to try if you haven't had authentic sushi before." 

Taylor nodded to herself before her eyes widened suddenly.

"Oh yeah! Mochi ice-cream is amazing and don't leave without getting some. Dress-code is less formal than the Italian place, but still wear something cute because I wanna have something to tease Victoria about when you two get back."

Get ice-cream and be cute. She could handle that.

Taylor's arms climbed above her head and she screwed her eyes shut tightly as she stretched, a quiet groan escaping her as she did so. When she was finished she looked in Max's direction again with a knowing expression on her face.

"Now, speaking of Victoria, I have to go do her makeup so nobody calls the police or something while you're off making a scene wherever the two of you decide to go." She said as she stood, visibly fighting down the urge to stretch again.

Max understood exactly how she felt.

Taylor faced her again momentarily before walking towards the door.

"While we're talking about makeup, the marks on your cheek shouldn't be too hard to cover up evenly if you're careful, and your lips could pass as just being chapped with some effort. If you need some help, just send me a text a few minutes before you meet up with Victoria and I'll come see what I can do, 'kay?" Taylor said, and despite her best efforts, Max couldn't find a shred of deceit in the blonde girl's tone.

"Sure thing." Max said, letting a genuine smile sneak across her face momentarily. "Thanks, Taylor."

Taylor smiled back.

"No sweat, Max." She said as she opened the door. On her way out, she turned and faced her again, still smiling.

"Just remember, if you hurt Victoria again, I'll kill you."

The last thing Max saw before the door clicked shut behind her was the glint of morning sunlight off of Taylor's teeth.

She shivered and flopped backwards onto her bed, taking comfort in the soft mound of blankets she steadily burrowed into.

_Note to self: 'Tori is only the third scariest blonde at Blackwell._

That probably shouldn't be making her feel less nervous about their date, but it _really_ was, and Max wasn't going to be looking gift horses in the mouth any time soon. From every indication Max had seen, Victoria was a big softie on the inside, as long as you got through the prickly outside first. Like a cactus or a kiwi or something.

A sloppy smile found its way onto her face against her will as she thought about how Victoria would feel if she knew the current fantasy she was starring in inside Max's head involved a tree full of grumpy blonde coconuts.

She could actually hear them bitching at her, complaining that she had the audacity to wash up on _her_ beach, then complaining when when she went to leave, and then getting sappy and aggressively embarrassed when Max told her she was the prettiest bunch of coconuts on the whole island.   
  
Max's yawn made her just aware enough to reach over and turn on her alarm. A nap was feeling like the best move after all, especially if she was able to chase this little daydream a bit further.  
  
She was asleep before she noticed the pun.

* * *

11:15 AM found a pair of girls standing in Blackwell's parking lot next to a spotless white Miata. The taller of the pair, a blonde, was immaculate by every definition of the word. From head to toe, Victoria Chase was the absolute picture of elegance.  
  
Max Caulfield, for her part, was best described as charming- her hair was still slightly damp, for one. Her personal definition of "cute, but a little fancy" meant throwing a cardigan over her usual animal-print shirt and wearing the least-scuffed pair of Chuck Taylors in her closet.  
  
Victoria gave the brunette across from her a once-over for about the twelfth time since Max had stepped out of the dorm and shook her head.  
  
"Bold move not taking Taylor up on her makeup offer." She said as she pressed the unlock button on her key fob. Max smiled idly and shrugged one shoulder as she opened the door and settled into the passenger seat of the Miata, waiting until Victoria had sat down and shut the driver's side door behind her before replying.  
  
"It was either letting her work her black magic on a _barely_ _noticeable_ scrape, or not take a shower. Sacrifices had to be made." Max said, pointedly ignoring the fact that she could have done both if she hadn't snooze'd her alarm a time or two too many.  
  
What Victoria didn't know probably wouldn't hurt her.  
  
Victoria's scoff was audible even over the car's ignition as the blonde girl pushed the clutch in and put the Miata in-gear.  
  
Max hadn't thought Victoria was the type to drive stick, but then again there were apparently plenty of things Max didn't know about the blonde girl.   
  
_You learn something new every day,_ _Max.  
  
_Max sincerely hoped she had enough days to get a solid bead on Victoria Chase.  
  
The blonde seemed to know Max was thinking about her because her eyes lingered on Max's for a long moment as they sat at the stop-sign at the exit of Blackwell Academy's grounds.  
  
In the distance, through the sea-fog, Max could see the lighthouse.   
  
She focused on the searching green wash of Victoria's eyes instead.  
  
Her expression softened momentarily for a reason Max couldn't discern, but a familiar rose-colored tinge came to the other girl's cheeks and that was all the familiar territory Max needed to orient herself.  
  
Victoria's lips parted and joined listlessly twice before she was able to put what she was thinking into words.  
  
"Caulfield, I know I've said this before, but you're somehow making those marks work for you." She laughed, but there was a hint of something that wasn't exactly happiness mixed with everything else in the tone of her voice.  
  
Victoria blinked, long and slow, and absentmindedly shifted to neutral and pulled the brake, making sure they didn't roll into traffic.  
  
Max was confused, but stayed quiet, choosing instead to watch the play of emotions shift and flicker across Victoria's face. After a few moments, the blonde girl's eyes drifted open with a soft exhale.  
  
Victoria's lips parted again, but they didn't close. Instead, a warm hand crept -steady and gentle- around Max's shoulder to curl softly in the damp hair at the back of her head.   
  
Max's eyes slid shut, and in moment her world was compressed down to the soft, slick heat of Victoria's lips on hers. An involuntary, stilted gasp pulled more of Victoria into her; her scent, her _taste._ There was a buzzing in Max's head that seemed to fill her full to bursting every time Victoria made a needy little noise in the back of her throat and dripped like warm honey into the pit of her stomach with every brush of a cinnamon tongue-tip across her own. She felt the warmth of a cheek under the fingers of her right hand, but couldn't recall bringing her hand up to cup Victoria's face.  
  
The blonde pulled away and their lips slid apart with a soft, wet noise, but she hadn't managed to retreat more than millimeters before she leaned back down to press the two of them together again.  
  
Max felt the hard ridges of fingernails dig slightly into her scalp and something in her belly clenched down at the sensation. A wordless, _raw_ sort of sound escaped her and was answered immediately by a greedy mewling keen from Victoria's throat that ended only when the taller girl was finally able to pull herself free of Max's lips.  
  
"Why did you make me wait all morning for this?" Victoria panted quietly, forehead to forehead with the smaller brunette.  
  
Max's eyes were having trouble focusing, but she responded as best she could.  
  
"You're blaming me for this after that picture you sent me?" Max replied, stealing another quick kiss as a fingertip methodically traced a path down the firm, smooth span of VIctoria's stomach underneath her sweater.  
  
"For fucks' sake that was a _hint_ , Caulfield. You were supposed to say something cute back and then come and find me, but instead-" Another kiss, this time punctuated with a brief press of _teeth,_ "- you didn't reply at all and I thought I was coming on too strong and scared you away or something."  
  
Despite the headiness of the mood, Max snorted.  
  
"If you couldn't tell by now Victoria, I kinda _like_ strong." Max said, pressing one last, firm kiss on Victoria's slightly bruised lips as she collapsed back into her seat with a heavy, contented sigh.  
  
Moments passed in a spell of quiet broken up only by the sounds of heavy, panting breaths as both girls steadily regained their composure.

"I kinda like a lot of things about you if we're being honest though, 'Tori."   
  
Victoria froze like a deer in headlights, but didn't make a sound in response. The only thing that let Max know she'd even heard her was the almost incandescent flare of red across Victoria's face.  
  
Max laughed as she reached across the center console and squeezed Victoria's shaky hand in hers.

* * *

  
It was a comfortable silence some time later as Victoria dropped the brake and slipped the Miata back into gear, letting the car finally pull out onto the road towards Portland.  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi.
> 
> Sorry it took a month, but between a very busy work schedule and catching the flu (the regular old flu, nothing spooky) it was an ordeal finding time to write. That being said, this chapter and last chapter were initially going to both be Chapter 5, but that would have been almost fourteen-thousand words. This way was better, I think.
> 
> Anyway, I have been working on a backlog so we don't have to wait so long between updates if the world decides to end between posting dates. Expect updates bi-weekly for the foreseeable future, and I'll post updates in my profile if there are any changes, so keep a lookout.
> 
> Chapter 7: Settler should be out near the end of the month, and with that we'll be close to the 45k word mark. That's such a milestone, and I'm really excited to reach it with you guys.
> 
> Please review if you can, and wash your hands.
> 
> Love y'all  
> alt_


	7. Settler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If things get too gay, the general rule is to scroll down until you hit double linebreaks.
> 
> It's good to be back.

  
Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

7

* * *

The ocean fog had mostly boiled away under the late morning sun, but the outside air was cool enough in the early coastal fall that the orangish streamers slipping through the rear window did nothing more than cast the brunette at her side in a soft light that made the tips of her fingers itch for the familiar weight of her camera. 

The camera in her bag in the trunk of the car, hopelessly out of reach.

So Victoria stole glances, every chance she could, at the sleeping girl just inches to her right. In moments snatched away from watching the road, she studied every strand of tawny hair washed in honeyed sunlight. 

Every freckle cast in shadow on a cheek framed under long, dark eyelashes. 

Every subtle twitch of pale-pink lips slightly parted in sleep.

The cabin of the car was quiet aside from the low hum of the engine and the soft acoustic twang of a guitar coming from the stereo. It was a song she'd heard Max play on Sunday mornings just like this one.

Well, maybe not _just_ like this one.

Victoria's lips pulled together as she forced herself to look away from the girl at her side, and back towards the road.

Those other mornings had been spent either curled into a miserable ball on her bed with a pillow over her ears, or trying maybe a just a bit too hard to stay quiet enough that she could hear the brunette's voice from across the hallway separating their rooms.

She'd spent -this- morning kissing Max Caulfield before driving the two of them to their first real date at some heretofore undecided restaurant in Portland, and she wasn't nearly as nervous as she thought she should be. A bit shocked at how well things seemed to be going, certainly, but oddly enough not _nervous_ at all.

Victoria's ever-present confidence -bordering on arrogance, really- was usually a front to cover some underlying insecurity.

Not here.

Having someone relying on her, strangely enough, _reinforced_ her. It was a pleasant sort of pressure, like a heavy blanket, or falling asleep with someone's head on her chest.

It was usually Taylor's, but still.

Victoria shook the cobwebs out of her own head as best she could while still keeping her eyes on the road, but couldn't get rid of the feeling that she was missing something. She shouldn't be this confident; this _comfortable_ , considering everything that had happened.

The other shoe had to drop sometime, right? 

Victoria stole another glance at the sleeping girl at her side and remembered the hopeful shimmer in red-ringed eyes when she had told her everything was going to be okay.

Max had believed her. Max had believed _in_ her.

The nervousness that Victoria was expecting to be there, the crush and weight of the other girl's expectations and _hopes_ , just.. wasn't.

Instead, the more faith Max put in her, the fuller Victoria felt.

It was a good feeling, to be needed.

Victoria inhaled, filling her lungs with a wash of warm leather and cheap apple shampoo. Even a week ago, she would have been irked to find out that - _yet again_ \- Caulfield had to go and make 'bargain-bin' work in ways it had no right doing.

The girl was a witch. That had to be it.

Victoria stole another glance out of the corner of her eye, idly imagining what Max would look like in a stereotypical witch's costume; a wide-brimmed hat cocked a bit off-center over a frilly black skirt and a pair of dark tights. She could probably bribe Taylor into doing Max's makeup; just enough to be provocative, without completely crossing the line into outright slutty.

Somewhere between Lydia Deetz and Morticia Addams. Definitely stopping short of something overtly _lewd_ like Elvira-

_Victoria, watch the fucking road._

Victoria collected herself just in time to not miss their exit, the splash of pink on her cheeks deepening at the sound of a voice from her right.

"Why's y'r face red, 'tori.." Max asked, her voice heavy with sleep as she rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands.

Victoria swallowed automatically and her left hand tightened around the steering wheel as she stalled, flatfooted.

She dropped the Miata into 4th gear maybe a bit more forcefully than she'd intended, but the pull of deceleration was enough to knock her loose of her embarrassment at having been caught staring like a creep.

She used the sudden shift in momentum to her advantage as she spoke, only slightly changing the subject.

"We're doing a Halloween party next Saturday. I want you to go with me." Victoria said, her voice tinged with more confidence than she really felt.

She could almost feel Max's eyes on her; her focus something like a sunbeam through glass in a way that made Victoria feel like a particularly interesting ant.

Her face was on fire.

That's not how this was supposed to go at all.

Victoria faltered a bit.

"I mean, you don't have to if you don't want-"

"I'd love to, Victoria."

They spoke at the same time, their voices running into each other somewhere in the middle-space. As soon as Max's words registered in her head though, a relieved laugh escaped her in a way she couldn't quite disguise as a sigh before it had fought its way free.

Max was still looking at her, and after a glance in her mirrors to make sure she wasn't about to kill anyone, Victoria looked back.

She followed the trail the brunette's blue eyes traced over her, smirking as she caught a quick flicker down to her lips and back.

Victoria idly caught the edge of her lip between her teeth and brought her hand up from the gear-shifter long enough to sweep a stray lock of hair behind her ear, feeling something inside her swell at the way Max's lips parted in response.

This was much more familiar territory.

"Take a picture, Caulfield. It'll last longer."

Max's eyes widened, and Victoria saw a multitude of emotions cross the freckled girl's face before she finally found one she was happy with: mischievous.

Max's hand darted into Victoria's purse inside the center console, found her cell phone, and with entirely too much confidence, unlocked it.

-How the _fuck_ does she know my password?-

Victoria's dumbstruck and borderline scandalized expression was quickly captured in a snap of her own camera, but all Victoria could parse in that moment was how _smug_ Max's grin was from under the edge of her phone.

There was a war being fought in Victoria's head in the small moments immediately following the click of the shutter. It was quick and it was bloody and in the end, Victoria just barely managed to keep her hands on the wheel.

She instead opted for a smirk and did her absolute best to push down every emotion that wasn't the specific flavor of measured aggression she needed at the moment. Her right hand drifted down to the shifter and she dropped the car into second gear; just enough for a steady prowl through Portland's outskirts.

Max's smug expression had dialed back somewhat at Victoria's momentary lapse of composure, and was completely melted away by the subtle jolt of the car coming to a stop just off the slow back-road's shoulder.

Finally able to move without having to worry about killing both of them, Victoria made quick but precise work of her seatbelt and turned to face Max fully for the first time in a little over an hour.

Before she'd stopped the car, she'd had an entire scene planned in her head. She'd poke at Lamefield for a minute or two to remind her of the status quo, then make her blush somehow, snap a quick picture to even the score, and then they'd be on their way. 

Now, though?

If the autumn sun had been doing magical things to the pale brunette on the bland stretch of highway they had driven so far, then here, under the auburn sway of maple trees; broad leaves catching and scattering the sunlight in ways that left little halo'd pools of amber and shadow puddling warmly around the two of them, well..

- _Fuck_ those half-second glances didn't do her justice at all-

Victoria's frustration didn't abate so much as it _condensed_ , sharpening as it did so into something less readily discernible, but all the more lethal for it.

Green eyes met blue, and Victoria's hand reached out and tugged her phone from Max's unresisting fingers, noticing idly as she flipped the screen around to face her that the other girl hadn't needed to adjust the focus or lighting at all to capture Victoria's red-faced embarrassment perfectly.

Typical.

Victoria channeled that feeling, using it as fuel as she leaned forward, drinking in Max's flush as the smaller girl tried to shift away.

"Victoria, I-" Max stammered, but faltered into silence as Victoria firmly cupped her chin with the hand that wasn't flickering through her phone's camera settings in a practiced blur.

Victoria could feel Max's uncertainty in the small tremors underneath her fingertips and the brief but instinctive resistance against her hand as she tilted the girl's head just so, catching part of her face in the shadow of a pair of broad, burgundy leaves that had fallen against the glass of the windshield in only the last minute or so.

Victoria looked out past her camera, noticing how the soft sunlight seemed to catch on the last remnants of the trail of marks underneath one of Max's eyes. Her thumb pulled back, brushing gently but deliberately over a crack in the surface of Max's lips, the resulting blush across the girl's freckled cheeks making her have to tilt her head just a bit deeper into the shadow of the leaves to compensate.

The new angle pushed the delicate profile of Max's face out of the shade and into a ray of sunshine that soaked into a lock of chestnut hair, framing it in a manner that set the amber strands within alight. 

Victoria froze, an involuntary reaction to keep herself steady while her heart tried to turn itself inside out.

She swallowed again, and gathered enough of herself to slide her hand up from Max's chin and into the almost-dry hair above the nape of Max's neck, until all that was visible of Victoria in the viewfinder was the ridge of her thumb resting along Max's sunwashed and freckled cheek, and part of the wrist that held the two of them together.

She sensed some of Max's tension unwind against her palm, feeling more than hearing the soft warmth of a sigh slide across her skin.

"Perfect." Victoria said quietly as her thumb found the mock shutter-release on her phone's camera, taking only enough time to confirm the picture had saved before carelessly dropping the phone into the dark space between her seat and the central console. 

Max's eyes shot open in surprise at the noise, but by the time Victoria felt the other girl had realized what position she was in, the blonde had already reached her other hand around and behind the smaller brunette, using the passenger headrest as leverage to pull herself across the low console and into Max's lap.

"Absolutely perfect." She said with complete certainty as she looked down at the girl pinned underneath her, acutely aware of the way the inward slant of the seat drew her knees unexpectedly downward and behind Max's hips.

Max's doe-in-headlights expression coaxed a smile that was all teeth onto Victoria's face, a triumphant noise escaping her as she felt the brunette tense momentarily and then -after a brief brush of their lips together- _finally_ relax against her fingers again. Overwhelmed, Victoria pulled Max impossibly closer; the soft, tentative brush of the smaller girls tongue over her lips caused her breath to tangle in her lungs before bleeding into a heady groan she smothered in the back of her throat as she shifted off to the side, letting the weight of her center settle directly against the firm ridge of Max's hip.

 _'Slow it down, V.._ ' A familiar voice warned inside her head, carefully tracking the way Max's eyes had widened and the warm puff of a surprised breath against her cheek. 

Apparently she wasn't as subtle as she thought she was. 

Victoria prepared to adjust her strategy a bit, rocking her weight backwards and towards the softer surface of Max's thigh in a way that was a touch less aggressive,-a touch less _intimate_ -, but suddenly there was a warm resistance snaking around behind her, low and firm, and then she was being pulled back downward.

A surprised glance down at Max's face revealed that in the moment she hadn't been looking, the small brunette's expression had morphed from one of shocked embarrassment into something flushed and nervous and _eager_ in a way that made Victoria's knees weak and caused something deep in her belly to writhe in response. Without thinking she slid back down -as deep into Max's lap as she could go- and barely managed to catch her lip between her teeth in time as the smaller girl pulled her downward at the same moment she pressed her own hips up and _in._

Victoria's knees locked on either side of Max's hips as she hungrily searched the face of the girl underneath her. The freckled girl's eyes were closed and almost pinched towards the corners in focus, even as her face burned from her chin to the tips of her ears. Her lips, normally a pale shade of pink, were cherry-red and slick and just the slightest bit parted. The two of them were pressed so tightly together, chest to chest, that Victoria could feel each hitch and shudder in Max's breath every time one of their movements pulled a gasp out of the blonde that she couldn't bite down and swallow in time.

Her fingers bunched in Max's hair almost desperately as the brunette's hand that wasn't busy guiding Victoria against her crept underneath her sweater and around her back to rest skin-to-skin against her ribs on the underside of her arm.

Victoria pried her fingers off the headrest, groaning shamelessly as the new lack of support allowed her to sink a few more starved millimeters down onto Max. Her now-freed hand quickly made its way next to its twin in Max's hair, staying there only long enough to pull the brunette -her eyes still screwed tightly shut- up, close enough to crush their lips together. 

She felt a pointed tug on her bottom lip at the same time Max's hold on her tightened, the sharp pressure of Max's fingernails digging against the sensitive skin of her thigh and the tense span of her back coupled with the fervor in the way the smaller girl rolled her swollen lip between her teeth tore a moan out of Victoria that was nothing short of lascivious.

Victoria pulled their lips apart even as she ground herself down against the ridge of Max's hip through the denim of the brunette's jeans, panting open-mouthed and flustered as the freckled girl's lips found a familiar spot against the side of her neck, having pulled the flare of Victoria's turtleneck to the side in her haste. Max huffed wordlessly as Victoria shifted back and away from her only moments later, but eased when she realized Victoria was in the process of pulling her sweater up and over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin camisole and her tights.

Victoria's first attempt at speech died with a whimper, all the breath in her lungs leaving her in a rush the instant Max's teeth pressed against her naked throat.

"F-fuck, Caulfield.." Victoria gasped, trying and failing to keep the heady wash of emotion out of her voice as she spoke.

"How far-" She bit her sentence off with a hiss as Max's hand dove south and _squeezed_ \- "How far were you w-wanting this to g- _aahhh!_ "

Her only answer was the soft -pop- of Max's mouth unsealing from the hollow of her throat for just long enough to slip downward to her collarbone and for lips and teeth to meet skin again.

Victoria's grip shifted in Max's hair as she leaned down, her breaths coming fast and deep and accented with needful pants and whimpers she wasn't even attempting to disguise anymore.

Instead, she clenched her fingers in Max's hair and grinned at the hiss she earned from the flushed brunette.

Her voice was clear and searing.

"Then fucking _look at me_ , Caulfield." Victoria gasped achingly into Max's ear.

She felt Max jerk underneath her, and the instant the brunette's lips were off of her neck she was kissing her, careless of the way her bruised lip throbbed at the pressure or the way her head swam from lack of air.

Victoria abruptly pulled their lips apart, hardly able to breathe anymore, and mewled helplessly as she raised herself off of Max only long enough to claw the waistband of the softly panting brunette's jeans down below her hips, desperate to feel the freckled girl's skin against her.

Victoria shuddered as she lowered herself back down onto Max mindlessly, the moment they had been apart being enough that the scorching span of Max's skin gliding and pressing against the damp cloth crushed between them tore up her spine and into her head like a bolt of thunder.

Victoria pressed herself against the brunette below her, forehead to forehead, and the blatant, shameless need in the other girl's clouded blue eyes drove the last rational thought out of the blonde girl's head.

"Look at me, Max. I want you to _see-_ "

A pair of lips found Victoria's and the blonde moved against them by raw instinct as something burst somewhere in the back of her head and poured through her like an electric wave, throbbing and writhing and pooling in boiling knots inside her as she ground her starving core down into the girl beneath her, coming completely unwound in a shuddering, wordless cry that began against a pair of warm, soft lips and ended buried in a tuft of tawny hair that smelled like apple shampoo.

* * *

* * *

There was something pressing down on her, warm and heavy. There was breath in her hair, and every long brush of it against her skin pulled her more fully into the present. 

The weight in her lap was Victoria Chase, and the way the girl was holding onto her- unguarded and vulnerable- pulled at something inside of her. Over the span of moments marked only by the slow ins and outs of their breathing, Max studied their situation as best she could.

Her face was buried somewhere between Victoria's chest and chin, and she couldn't move without disturbing her.

That wasn't an option.

So Max sat, and _sensed._

Both of her hands were pressed directly against skin; the fingers of her left fitting into the subtle grooves of Victoria's ribs like they had been shaped to fit there, while her right hand dipped under her tights to rest somewhere around the blonde's outer hip. She pulled Victoria closer on impulse, and was immediately fascinated by the sudden flutter underneath her fingertips and the jittery breath against the crown of her head.

Max smiled, slow and soft, into the side of Victoria's neck as a realization began to take shape. She let her eyes drift shut as she tilted her head slightly to the side; just enough to brush her lips against a tender spot in the hollow of Victoria's neck.

The parts of the taller blonde that weren't helplessly limp squirmed against her slightly in response, and Max's suspicion was confirmed. She felt Victoria's throat bob under her lips as she swallowed as if to speak, but Max kissed her again and whatever Victoria had meant to say came out as an almost pitiful noise of frustration instead.

She felt Victoria fidget again and after a grumble of protest Max couldn't quite make out, she slid sideways off of Max's hip and came to settle in her lap.

A moment passed before she felt Victoria try to speak again.

Her first attempt was muffled and got lost somewhere in Max's hair, but her second was much more clear, if not uncharacteristically reserved for the blonde girl. 

"You were supposed to tell me to stop."

Max giggled.

She had to pull her face out of the crook of Victoria's neck to respond, but with a little effort she managed it.

"You looked like you had everything under control. From my point of view, at least." Max conceded, taking careful note of the way the autumn air seemed to be reacting with Victoria's flushed skin.

Max wiggled in place, sighing as she felt circulation return to her legs as Victoria adjusted her position in response.

Victoria's expression betrayed her nerves, but before Max could open her mouth to speak and try to ease some of the tension the blonde was feeling, Victoria had spoken again.

"I just.. fuck, Caulfield." Victoria said, her voice conflicted as she nervously brushed her fringe away from her eyes.

Her hand was shaking.

Max pressed her lips together briefly in thought before she moved, her right hand quickly finding the release for the passenger backrest as her left arm hooked up and underneath Victoria's shoulder, pulling the taller girl down as the seat slid back the handful of inches the coupe would allow.

Victoria followed her down, but Max could feel the tension play across her body like pianowire under her fingertips. She brought her right hand back up and rested it on Victoria's far hip, relaxing somewhat as she felt Victoria unwind the slightest bit beneath the small circling of her thumb.

Victoria huffed, the brush of breath in her ear sending warm waves down Max's spine.

"This is going to sound stupid," Victoria said, "but I don't want to rush us. Rush _you_."

Max considered the situation for about half a second before she giggled again. She felt Victoria lean back a little and allowed their eyes to meet despite the sudden shyness that had begun to creep in around the edges.

"Exactly." Victoria said in response to Max's quiet laughter, her voice more certain than her expression showed. "It's hypocritical for me to say that, especially with all of _t_ _his-_ " She said, waving a hand around them as she spoke, "-but I _really_ don't want to pressure you or make you feel like you have to do anything you aren't comfortable with."

Max opened her mouth to speak, but a firm look from Victoria was all it took for her to decide to stay quiet for a moment longer.

Victoria swallowed, her confidence withering somewhat as she gathered the things she needed to say.

"I don't want you to think I'm a slut, either, Max. I just.."

She swallowed again, then laughed under her breath.

"I've liked you for.. a while, Maxine. It's unhealthy and pathetic, but when I look at you I fucking lock up from all the things you make me feel. You've _always_ done that to me, from the day you sat down in that classroom with your bullshit polaroid and made Mark fucking Jefferson pay attention to you."

Victoria met Max's eyes again and Max felt the blonde girl's hold on her tighten as she continued.

"Before that, even. You've been fucking with my head ever since you moved into the room across from mine and started singing American Football and it makes me _sick._ I look at you and I freeze. I hear your voice and you're all I can think about. Until a few days ago I could keep everything mostly under control by telling myself I just _hated_ you and that even if I didn't, it was just a stupid fucking crush and I was being a creep by letting it go on the way I was."

Victoria took a breath, audibly clearing some of her tension with a shaky but measured exhale.

"Except it's not a crush, Max. You mean something to me, and that means I have to worry about not _using_ you, which is really hard when you're actually kissing me back and I.."

Victoria's grip loosened as she slid her hands down from Max's shoulders to her wrists, squeezing them briefly before letting them settle in the valley where the two of them were joined.

"Max, you're talented and cute and honest and you drive me insane and there are so many ways that I know could fuck this up, and one of those is by coming on too strong or too fast and making you think all I wanted out of you was.. you know."

She pointedly looked at her turtleneck, hastily tugged off and pooled in the driver's floorboard.

"What I'm trying to say is.. you're important to me. You're important to me, and you make it _really_ hard to keep my hands off you, and I-"

It was _very_ difficult to kiss Victoria while smiling as widely as Max was, but somehow she made it work. Max took a moment to drink in Victoria's wide-eyed expression before pressing their lips together again briefly, all the while dragging the blonde down to lie against her, speaking as she did so.

"I understand, Victoria." Max said through the butterflies in her throat. "It's hard to keep my hands off you, too." 

A quick glance at the faint ring still visible around Victoria's neck had her hurriedly amending her statement.

"M-metaphorically, of course."

Victoria's laugh was quiet but genuine, and the sound of it pushed Max through her awkwardness well enough that she could continue.

"I'm not going to act like I have a bunch of experience with this type of thing, but I understand why you're worried."

Max sighed and relaxed against the backrest.

"I trust you, Victoria. I want you to trust me, too." She said, tilting her head to the side so she could meet Victoria's eyes.

"Trust me. I'll tell you to stop if you do something I'm not comfortable with, but until then just do what feels natural. We'll figure everything else out as we go along." Max raised her eyebrows questioningly, and after a moment Victoria's expression solidified into her usual look of casual confidence.

The blonde reached behind herself and to the side blindly, fumbling between the seats for a moment before smirking as she found her discarded phone. A glance at the screen had her rocking back on Max's lap, settling just above the brunette's knees as she shook her head with mock-solemnity.

"Where were you taking me for lunch again?" Victoria asked, meeting Max's eyes over the top of her phone.

Max considered the question for a second before she replied.

"I was told by a reliable source that there's a really good sushi place near the waterfront that we could try." She said, not sure exactly where Victoria was going with the question.

Victoria's eyes flicked down to her phone again, then back up to Max. Her expression was an odd mix of amused and something more complex that Max couldn't immediately parse. Things were made significantly more clear when she turned her phone around, showing the display to Max. 

2:37 PM.

_Had they really been here for that long?_

Max's face fell, her breath leaving her in a disappointed exhale. 

She had only just begun to sulk when she felt a hand slide against the outside of her thigh and squeeze just forcefully enough to feel through the denim of her jeans.

She looked up and was met with an exceptionally sly grin, but Victoria didn't let her stew in her confusion for very long.

"I know the place you're talking about, and they close for lunch at 3:00. I've got a counteroffer, though." Victoria canted her head slightly, sweeping her fringe away from her eyes as she did so.

"What's the plan, then?" Max asked, intrigued.

Victoria's smile curled up at the corner in a way that showed teeth. Max felt a weight lift off of her legs as Victoria wriggled herself sideways, placing her back against the car door, her feet in the driver's seat, and her butt firmly north of Max's knees.

"You have anywhere to be tonight, Caulfield?" Victoria asked as she idly paged through the contacts list of her phone.

Heat instantly sprang onto Max's cheeks as she considered the implications of what the girl in her lap was saying.

"I.. ah.."

-Fucking smooth, Max-

She was not about to be bullied by her own stream of consciousness. 

She pointedly cleared her throat.

"I'm free until class tomorrow morning, if I go at all. What's up?" She asked.

_Much better_

Victoria shot a look up at her from the corner of her eye.

"How does dinner sound instead?"

Max didn't have to think very long before answering.

"That sounds amazing." She said honestly, unable to keep the mix of relief and excitement from her voice when she replied.

Max never had much of a poker-face to begin with, anyway. 

Victoria murmured a quiet but pleased sound as she finished off her text message, nodding her head as the screen went black. She turned to face Max, her expression aloof. 

"Now, the only question is how we're going to occupy ourselves, now that we've got a few extra hours on our hands." Victoria asked, demurely looking up at Max through the dark fan of her eyelashes.

She had almost formed a coherent reply when Victoria very deliberately slid herself farther into her lap, crossing her legs casually as she did so.

Max was speechless.

"I can think of more than a few ways we could stay busy, if you don't have any better ideas that is." Victoria said in a tone that was just shy of a purr. 

Max saw Victoria's eyes glide across her face, noticing the instant Victoria recognized her flush for what it was by the predatory glint that immediately graced her smile.

She reached out and took Max's wrist in her hand, guiding it carefully behind her back so her palm rested on the blonde's far shoulder. Max's hold tightened automatically as she pulled Victoria farther into her on reflex.

Having Victoria pressed so close to her felt good.

Max was quiet, all of her focus going towards committing every inch of Victoria Chase's self-satisfied expression to memory.

The hand that wasn't toying with her phone reached out and took Max's left hand in hers.

"Two of the best photographers on the west coast stranded in Portland at this time of year? I'm sure we can find something to get into." Victoria said, confidence dripping like honey from her lips. 

All at once Max saw a glimmer come into Victoria's eyes as the girl in her lap's smile became something keen and catlike. She heard the phone in the blonde's hand buzz once and looked away from Victoria's face long enough to see that the two of them were firmly in the camera's viewfinder. 

They looked..

_Wow._

Victoria peeked up at her, green eyes narrowed as she thought. After a moment's deliberation, Victoria reached up and gingerly brushed the freckled span of Max's cheek with long, soft fingertips.

Victoria whispered something to herself that Max couldn't make out, but the goading pressure against her skin was unmistakable. She relaxed and allowed Victoria to pose her for the second time that afternoon. After a few seconds of finework that ended with Max's head tilted to the right and looking out through the passenger window, she heard Victoria hum to herself in consideration.

Max did her best to look down at the girl in her lap without moving her head from where Victoria had angled it, but her periphery was only detailed enough to tell her that Victoria was staring at her, very deeply in thought. Max knew the moment Victoria came to a decision, though, by the downright _aggressive_ noise she made before she spoke.

"You're missing something, Caulfield." Victoria said, but before Max could ask what it was, there was heat on her neck, right below the dip where jaw met throat.

_Oh, fuck.._

Max tensed as a shock rolled through her, from where her toes curled inside of her socks up through her tingling legs to dance, warm and coiling, somewhere between her belly and her spine.

For just a moment the heat on her neck was gone and she whimpered until a hand rose up, half to cover her mouth and half to keep her still.

"Don't you fucking _dare_ move, Maxine." Whispered the voice in her ear. 

The instant she stilled, the heat returned. 

Victoria's breath traced along slick skin as she pulled away with a huff, and it was all Max could do to keep herself in the position Victoria needed her in instead of _reaching down and-_

"Take the picture, Max." the blonde girl asked from just below her. Distantly, she felt a phone being slid into the hand that wasn't holding Victoria against her. Another handful of seconds came and went as adjustments were made and Max felt a warmth settle against her chest.

 _'Now.'_ Came a whisper, and immediately her thumb pressed against the mock release out of reflex.

The cabin of the car was silent save for the click of a shutter.

The pressure against her chest lifted and she heard Victoria make a sound too complex for her to decipher without context. She glanced downward briefly, testing the water, and when she wasn't met with any sort of protest she tilted her head to fully see what had happened.

Victoria was staring wide-eyed at the phone in her hand with the most open look of unguarded amazement Max could remember seeing on her face. She turned, and Max saw her mouth open, the beginnings of some boastful statement or other already forming on her lips.

Max kissed her instead.

* * *

They spent only a few minutes together before they parted, panting softly. Max's hand reached out and found the door handle after a bit of fumbling, and a with a short tug and a mechanical pop the door swung open.

Victoria sighed as she slid from Max's lap, her feet meeting solid ground with the crunch of leaves collected by the roadside. She pulled herself out of the passenger seat and stretched the moment she was able, high and grasping towards the canopy above them.

If Max paid a little more attention than was proper to the rise of Victoria's thin camisole above the waist of her tights, well, neither of them mentioned it.

Victoria still smirked knowingly, though.

Max reached up to take the hand the blonde girl was offering her and was unable to fight down a stretch of her own as she came upright for the first time in several hours.

Her legs appreciated having circulation again, if the pins and needles were anything to go by.

"Hey Max?" Victoria asked innocently enough from a few feet behind her.

"Hmm?" Max answered as she rolled the stiffness out of one of her shoulders with a happy little groan.

"You mind popping the trunk for me? My _real_ camera's in there, and I think we'll need it." Victoria said, gesturing towards the steering column on the driver's side of the cabin.

Max leaned over, careful not to bump her tingling legs against anything as she reached across the center console to grab Victoria's keys from out of the ignition. Her fingers had barely curled around the plastic keyfob before Victoria's voice came from over her shoulder again, her tone only slightly smug.

"And grab my sweater too? It's on the floorboard I think."

Max groaned internally, but resigned herself quickly as she reached deeper into the far side of the car to grab Victoria's discarded turtleneck.

She pulled back out of the car and righted herself, twin prizes gripped in her hands, and noticed Victoria's expression was a good bit more amused than it had any real right being. Her suspicion piqued, she took a stab in the dark.

"Were you checking me out just now?"

Victoria froze for only an instant, but the momentary stillness combined with the faint pinking of the taller girl's ears was all the indication she needed to confirm her theory.

Max's gaze strayed towards her feet as she considered things. She wasn't used to being stared at in such a way, but one look back up at Victoria's expression; half mortified and half offended, was more than worth the price of admission- even if she _hadn't_ liked the gleam in Victoria's eyes the moment before she realized she was caught.

Which she did. Quite a lot.

Max laughed out loud as she turned quickly on her heel, stepping around the rear of the Miata and towards the trunk of the car.

"It's fine, _'Tori._ You're allowed to look." Max said teasingly as her thumb found the unlock button on the keyfob. Victoria was sputtering something indignant from behind her, but Max was paying more attention to the treasure-trove of random stuff Victoria apparently kept stashed in the boot of her car. 

Her camera gear -the lenses alone probably costing more than Max's entire scholarship was worth on the _low_ end- was closest to the top, but just underneath that was a cold-weather sleeping bag of all things. The usual was present, too; a spare tire, jumper cables, and some weird curved metal thing people always got mauled with in movies, but right next to that was a messenger bag with what looked like a couple of changes of clothes sitting on top of what had to be her _second_ first-aid kit.

 _'Victoria is such a boy-scout, geeze.. that's actually kind of endearing.'_ Max thought idly as she gathered Victoria's camera equipment, careful not to disturb any of the carefully arranged supplies around it.

She righted herself and turned, finding the still-recovering girl a bit more than arms-reach away from her, standing with a brow raised and a questioning look on her face. 

"See something you like, Caulfield?" Victoria asked defensively as she finished pulling her turtleneck over her head.

"Mhmm." Max replied without any hesitation as she stepped closer, shortening the distance between them to a handful of inches. Being this close to Victoria gave her the best view of the expression that spread across the blonde's face as she was caught flatfooted.

"You're lucky your camera's still in the bag. Victoria. That would have been a cute picture." Max admitted, stepping around the taller girl and towards the grove of maple trees they had parked next to.

Victoria recovered more quickly than she had the last few times Max had teased her and managed to match Max's eager pace into the wooded copse after only a few strides of her longer legs.

"You've got all night to get me red-faced under your lens, Caulfield. No pouting." Victoria jabbed back, happily taking the opportunity to snag the black form of her camera from Max's loosened grip.

To her credit, Max recovered quickly, darting into the treeline after Victoria as fast as she could without snagging herself on a grasping branch or gnarled root. It didn't take her long at all to catch up to the taller girl, doing so after Victoria had come to a stop in a small clearing a couple of minutes away from the roadside. She was occupying herself fiddling with a lens fixture, humming contentedly when she had everything put together the way she wanted.

She turned to face Max and the brunette's breath caught in her throat.

There was something about Victoria with a camera in her hands that bled confidence almost to the point of regality, and Max wasn't sure she'd ever quite get used to the sight.

She cleared her throat quietly and averted her eyes towards the other girl's feet.

"The lighting here's, ah.." Max said, trailing off.

"Yeah. It's _really_ good." Victoria finished for her, stepping back a couple of paces and kneeling, careful to lay her knee across the material of her camera-bag as to not dirty her leggings.

"Now," Victoria said, "You mentioned you'd been here once before, right?"

Max nodded. "When I was little, yeah. With Chloe."

She couldn't keep the smile off her face any more than she could fight down the immediate stinging in her eyes.

Victoria continued speaking, easy and low. The same calm tone she had used in the bathroom what felt like weeks ago.

"Tell me about the zoo?" Victoria asked, and immediately images came to Max's mind, spooling along like film.

A mischievous grin on a strawberry-blonde girl -all knobby knees and elbows- as she pulled a tiny brunette to the side, just out of earshot of her parents.

Conspiratorial whispers that smelled like watermelon lip balm.

A gap-toothed smile.

The back of a pirate hat and the steady tug of a warm hand on hers, pulling her down a side hallway and towards a push-bar door labeled "Employees Only" in big green letters.

A big hand on her shoulder and a bemused look on Dad's face as he realized what his two girls had been planning.

Mom reacting a bit too harshly, and the crocodile tears that followed.

Another gap-toothed smile; this one sharp towards the edges.

Screaming from the passenger seat as Mom reached into her purse without looking first.

Laughter from Dad and Mr. Price in the garage as she and Chloe raced each other up the stairs to the bedroom

...

Max swallowed as her teeth ground together on reflex. Her fist clenched as she missed a breath, and little black spots dotted the edge of her vision.

The picture was so clear in her head. She could see every strand of hair splayed out like an auburn fan on the pillow next to her. She could feel a pair of legs entwined with hers underneath the blankets in the dim wash of the lavalamp on the bedside table. She could hear the whispers of the girl next to her, and feel the rise of gooseflesh across her skin from the ghost-story that she was telling.

She could feel something on her face, hot and wet.

She could see Chloe's look of confusion as she brushed her thumb through the tears on her cheek.

She could see Victoria's look of concern as she tried to wipe away the blood streaming from her nose.  
  
She screwed her eyes shut as tight as she could and reached out, pulling herself forward almost desperately as her fingers bit into fabric and caught hold of the girl underneath it.

It felt like cashmere.  
  
It felt like cotton.

* * *

  


_I miss you so much._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cliffhangers, I swear. Chapter 8: Curtain Call is complete as of right now and will be published after I finish Chapter 9. This one's got some fairly heavy parallels (pardon the wordplay), so brownie points if you picked up on that.
> 
> I'm sorry for the delay, but it's a strange time to be in healthcare right now and I didn't want any of that to get into the story. Next update should be significantly faster, and as always, check my bio on Ao3 every now and then for updates.
> 
> Love y'all, thanks for reading, and wash your darn hands.  
> alt_


	8. Curtain Call

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

8

* * *

Her fingers were tangled in the thin cloth of a cotton nightshirt. She didn't need to open her eyes to see the faded blue fabric bunched in her fist, or to know that it missed the two pale buttons closest to the collar.  
  
She'd been here-

 _-Right here-  
  
_-countless times before.

Drowning wasn't the right word, despite the pool of fluid in her throat.

This was like being buried alive.

".. Max?"

That shirt had belonged to William Price.

He had given it to Chloe.

Chloe had sulked for days when Joyce had gotten rid of it.

 _-_ ten years ago _-_

It was everything she could do not to open her eyes at the soft ghosting of fingertips across her cheek.

"You had a bad dream, Max.." Chloe whispered sleepily as she pulled the blanket tighter around them.

Max could barely hear her speak through the choke of her own breath or the dizzying throb in her head, but the half-forgotten pressure of a clammy heel hooked over both of her knees and the faint scent of bubblegum toothpaste in the inches of air between them was enough to frame the scene through the eyelids she had crushed shut.

She tried to swallow, but the motion caught somewhere below the back of her tongue and she sputtered instead, exhaling heavily through her nose in a retching motion that was half a cough and half a gag. She inhaled sharply and recoiled, hacking, as the iron trickle backslid towards her lungs.

She couldn't breathe-

"Max?"  
  
_'Max?'_

She couldn't-

Something - _popped-_ inside her head as she was jerked onto her shoulder. She felt something take hold of her firmly by the jaw and roll it at an angle with significantly more force than what would be considered gentle, but with another release of pressure and a sudden seizing in her chest, she felt air rush into her lungs. 

"Max, can you hear me?" Came Victoria's voice from above her, quiet and clear.

Max coughed wetly in reply, but opened her eyes all the same. Victoria's voice had been calm and measured, but the look on her face was just south of frantic. Max brought the hand that wasn't pinned underneath her up towards Victoria's wrist, clumsily taking hold of it in a gesture that was supposed to be reassuring but wound up unsettling both of them instead. 

Her hand wasn't supposed to shake like that.

She inhaled again -more deeply this time, and forcibly stilled her nerves.

' _Just breathe, Max.'_

She exhaled slowly, content simply to let the world stop spinning in its own time.

After a minute or so had gone by without any surprises, she felt collected enough to try to speak.

"I'm okay, Victoria.." Max said softly, and this time her hold on the other girl's arm was firm.

Victoria visibly relaxed; the tension leaving her in a wave from the tight furrow of her brow down to the jitters in the thigh Max's head was resting on. The blonde's clipped fingernails brushed along Max's chin as she shifted her hold to allow her a bit more room to move, and Max's next breath came out as a relieved sigh as she rolled onto her back.

Victoria exhaled, the hand she didn't have cradling Max's head in her lap moving up to brush her fringe out of her eyes in one of her few nervous habits.

"What the hell _was_ that?" Victoria asked, and Max swallowed as she considered how to reply.

"I.. get nosebleeds, every now and then." Max said, trailing off somewhere in the middle, no longer able to meet Victoria's eyes.

She still heard Victoria's teeth click together, even if she couldn't see the expression on her face.

"Since _when,_ Caulfield?" Victoria asked, a familiar acidity bubbling somewhere in her tone. "I think I'd have _noticed_ by now if you-" Victoria exhaled harshly as she abruptly cut herself off. 

Max felt the hand on her shoulder flex, thin fingers clenching and shifting restlessly as Victoria navigated through whatever was in her head.

When she spoke a moment later her voice had softened, but had somehow become heavier for it.

"Look, Max.. I know it sounds self-centered, but I've been fucking _watching_ you for a while now, and I think I'd know if 'random nosebleeds and fainting' were some of your _things_."

Max's lips turned upwards, affronted, but Victoria just clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and lowered an eyebrow in response.

"Don't look at me like that Caulfield. I'm not saying there can't be anything about you I don't know- I'm saying that I _would_ know something like _this_." Victoria said, gesturing down at the bloody cashmere sweater Max was now using as pillow-slash-towel.

Victoria's grip shifted, and Max looked back towards her face in time to see her expression change into something less anxious and more.. tired? Frustrated?

Disappointed?

"If I had thought -this- was a thing that could happen, I- _we_ would have been ready for it. I wouldn't have been-" Victoria's head lolled back as her gaze drifted skyward.

" _Fuck.._ " Max heard her say, her voice more a breath than a whisper.

They stayed that way for a handful of moments, letting the sun set.

Victoria eventually pulled her left knee upward, drawing the back of Max's head downward into the valley where the top of the blonde girl's thigh met her hipbone. She stretched her other leg out in front of her and to the side, sighing heavily as she rolled her shoulders and propped herself up on her arms.

She met Max's eyes again.

"You _are_ okay, right?" Victoria asked, and Max paused to actually consider her question.

She licked her lips.

"Okay's a.. strong word, but I think I'll live." She offered honestly, wiggling so that she could lay more comfortably at an angle between Victoria's legs.

Victoria laughed, surprised.

"I'd hope so. For a second there I thought you'd had an aneurysm or something."

She laughed again.

"Can you imagine explaining any of this to the peanut gallery back at Blackwell? It'd be an absolute fucking _circus._ "

She shook her head idly, then glanced downward as Max spoke up.

"At least Juliet would have something new to talk about then: 'Local Girls Elope, Die in Occult Woodland Tryst', or something dramatic like that." Max said, giggling tiredly. 

Her laughter faded as her eyes fell on the stained sleeve of Victoria's sweater.

".. I really am okay, though. A little lightheaded, but I'll make it." She said, her cheeks pinking somewhat in embarrassment as her stomach chose that moment to growl weakly.

".. a little hungry too, apparently." Max said, twisting her head a little so she didn't have to look at the girl she was laying on.

Even still, she could _f_ _eel_ Victoria's smug grin.

"Well, we _did_ come here for food in the first place, before someone decided to have a _medical emergency_ in the middle of what was supposed to be a romantic photo-shoot." Victoria grumbled in faux-frustration.

"Romantic?" Max questioned, looking up at the girl above her.

"Mhmm." Victoria murmured as she met Max's eyes playfully. "I was going to woo the hell out of you, _Maxine._ " 

Despite the clearly joking tone in Victoria's voice, Max still turned fuchsia at the abuse of her given name.

"I think you're taking some liberties there, _'Tori._ " Max said, rolling over dizzily so that the haughty blonde wasn't so upside-down.

"You know I -hate- my name." She growled, planting one of her palms in the leaves next to Victoria's hip and leveraging herself up.  
  
She only wobbled a little. Progress.

Victoria just showed her teeth, and in a motion that was almost lazy pulled Max's planted arm against her side, bridged her hips, and rolled both of them over.

"I'll take whatever liberties I want, _Maxine.._ " Victoria purred, her face millimetres away from Max's own.

Oh.

The way Victoria's eyes raked over her in the moments that followed caused her breath to hitch, but Victoria's heavy expression quickly broke into a wry smile as she leaned up and let go of Max's arm.

Max groaned as Victoria's pleasant weight left her, but the blonde clicked her tongue again and pinched her brow in frustration.

"We've missed lunch already because you're too fucking cute for your own good, Caulfield. We're not missing dinner, too." Victoria said as she rocked back onto her knees.

Max mewled, snaking a heel behind where Victoria knelt between her legs and gently pressed her forward.

The litany of emotion that Victoria could convey with just the expression of her lips and jaw blew what remained of Max's mind. The one she settled on was complex in a way that was hard for Max to describe, but the pull of her voice, the pressure of the hand pushing down against her hips, the restless flicker of a tongue behind teeth-

_Hungry._

Victoria leaned down, catching Max's jaw in the palm of the hand that wasn't currently pinning her to the ground. Max squirmed, futilely attempting to press more of herself against the girl between her knees, but no matter how she twisted she just couldn't-

 _"Victoria.."_

Green eyes bored into her, -through her-, the heat of their focus holding her in place far more effectively than the hand at her waist or the nails against her cheek.

"Caulfield, you mutinous _slut,_ " Victoria hissed, "we are going to get up, go back to the car, un- _fuck_ ourselves, and go to dinner. Is any of that particularly hard to understand?"

The grip on her jaw relaxed somewhat, and Max recovered enough to shake her head side to side wordlessly.

Victoria looked her over one last time before leaning down and pressing their lips together. Max could feel the better part of the blonde's hawkish intensity unwind against her lips in the warm seconds that passed before she pulled back, just far enough away that they could meet each other's eyes.

How Victoria could make a smirk look equally brazen and vulnerable of all things..

"Good. I wasn't sure if I could tell you no again. Now we don't have to find out." She confessed, but before Max could respond Victoria had stolen another kiss and was pulling both of them to their feet.

Max fought down a brief wave of vertigo as she rose, but it wasn't anything a few seconds of forceful eye-rubbing couldn't fix. Anything to keep her from having to look at the blonde girl busying herself gathering their things from around them before she'd had time to catch her breath, really.

She took a moment to dust herself off a bit before she followed the taller girl out of the clearing. The couple of minutes they spent heading back to the car were mostly quiet aside from the soft rush of wind through the trees and the occasional snap of a fallen branch underfoot.

By the time the white Miata had come back into view, Max had cooled down enough that she could think through some of the less-heavy things that had happened in the last hour or so.

Her first attempt at speaking got lost in the sounds of Victoria opening and searching through the trunk of the car, but Max's second try was articulate enough to reach her through the mostly organized mass of supplies.

"If I'm being too aggressive, I'm sorry." Max said sincerely as she stepped around towards the back of the car. She would have tried phrasing it in a way that was slightly less blunt if she thought she could have managed it without stumbling over her words, but if Victoria's expression as she turned around to face her was anything to go by, the blonde had understood what she'd meant regardless.

"Max, I basically _dragged_ you across second base a couple of hours ago and I was worried that -I- was the one being too forceful then." Victoria said, holding a thin jacket out for Max to take.

Max peeled herself out of her dirtied cardigan before taking the darker jacket from Victoria, slipping it on carefully as the other girl continued.

"This isn't the first time this has come up, which means it's something we're both thinking about, right?" Victoria asked, tossing her sweater and Max's cardigan back into the trunk together before pulling a folded skirt from the top of the duffel-bag in front of her.

Max hmmed an agreement while she checked her reflection in the screen of her phone.

"When you say it that way it makes sense, but it's.. ugh." Max faltered, taking the moment she needed to wipe at her lips with her dampened fingertips to collect herself.

"It just feels weird how weird it doesn't feel." Max said, nodding emphatically as everything came together in her head.

Victoria's eyebrow crept upward and she snorted, almost stumbling as she stepped into the puddle of her skirt.

"Run that by me _one_ more time, Caulfield." She said, visibly confused but grinning nonetheless.

Max's cheeks pinked at the way Victoria was looking at her, but she explained herself as best she could anyway.

"It just catches me off guard how _good_ all of this is. I like seeing you like this, and it's hard to pull back and look at things rationally when just being with you is as nice as it is." 

It was Victoria's turn to blush, but Max continued.

"Every time I catch you looking at me there's a second where I think I'm crazy for imagining all of this; that I'm _i_ _nsane_ for thinking I could be close to Victoria Chase of all people, and then you turn red and look away just like you're doing now and I can't keep the smile off my face, because seeing you like that.. it's.."

Max swallowed and shook her head.

"Look 'Tori, I've got all the time in the world to gush and stroke your ego, but the short version is that if you like me half as much as I apparently like you, neither of us has much to worry about."

Yeah.

That sounded right.

If the small smile the blonde tried to hide behind her hand as she stepped towards the other side of the car was anything to go by; Victoria agreed, too.

* * *

Portland's waterfront wore the twilight like a ballgown dyed in amber and blue.

Max looked down at her dingy canvas sneakers and denim jeans.

She felt underdressed.

There was a warm pressure around her wrist for a moment and then she felt fingers slipping between her own.

Max was suddenly very aware of the dozens of people walking all around the two of them, but Victoria's hold did more to ground her than it did to set her on edge.

Still, the girl at her side seemed to notice something was amiss and she turned to face her as well as she could without letting go of her hand.

"Stagefright, Max?" Victoria asked, her eyes flicking between the uncertain set of Max's feet and the nervous jitter of her fingers against the blonde's own.

Max started to shake her head on reflex, then paused as she reconsidered.

She nodded softly.

"A little, yeah." She admitted, then hastily amended her statement when she noticed the way Victoria's eyebrows crept towards her hairline.

"It's just.. this is our first date. My first date _ever_ , really, and you look incredible. I look like a.. grungy hipster, or something." Max said, shuffling awkwardly in place.

She heard a muffled snort, and looked up in something like alarm.

Victoria was grinning despite the unsteady air.

"Right now you're _my_ grungy hipster, Max; it's part of your charm." Victoria said, with about as much theater as if she were discussing the weather. Still, despite the casual -almost dismissive- delivery, Victoria's eyes and smile never wavered. Her bluntness was more of a reassurance than anything else, really.

Honest, and careless of the consequences.

Cavalier. That was the word. 

Max was pulled from her thoughts as the blonde gestured around them at the multitude of people going about their lives.

"Besides, this is Portland. Half the grungy hipsters on the planet are right here in this city. This is where they _make_ your kind, Max." Victoria said flippantly.

She looked at Max again and her expression softened, her smile going from playful to something more complex as she stepped in close, resting her free hand on Max's hip underneath the dark fabric of her jacket.

"And, if you haven't noticed, 'grungy hipsters' are kind-of my thing."

She looked around them briefly and then back down at Max, pulling her closer as she did so.

"Well, -this one- is, at least."

Max could almost feel Victoria's words sink into her, warming her from the inside like fuzzy little embers.

She laughed softly, the sound quickly turning into a sigh as she rested her forehead in the center of Victoria's chest.

"I'm definitely wearing something nice the next time we go out. I promise." Max said, raising her head to meet Victoria's eyes.

Victoria, for her part, looked scandalized.

"Are you asking me on a _second_ date before we even finish our first? The _audacity,_ Miss Caulfield-" she said, cutting herself off with a melodramatic huff as she stepped away and spun on her heel, turning her back to Max.

Max missed the pleasant warmth of Victoria's hand in hers already and it'd only been about two seconds that they'd been apart.

_Fuck._

She'd worry about that later.

For now, her hand flexed involuntarily, eager to reclaim the warmth it had held moments ago. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Victoria's middle from behind, pulling the taller blonde as flush against her as she could manage without setting the two of them off-balance and tumbling into the railing at their side.

"I know a good thing when I see it, 'Tori.." Max mumbled into the middle of Victoria's back in a way that smushed her words together as they left her mouth.

She turned her head to the side, listening intently to the soft, steady thrum of the heart just inches away.

She felt a smirk of her own creep across her face.

"And nobody said it had to be our _second_ date we go out for. I was thinking our next one would be just the two of us and some cheesy movies or something; the fancy stuff can wait a few more weeks I think."

The way Victoria's heart sped up just the slightest bit as she spoke coaxed a wholehearted smile up from within her.

She squeezed the blonde in her arms a bit more tightly.

"Now hurry up and get me to this restaurant before we starve; I can _feel_ how empty you are and -my- stomach's been growling since noon."

She felt Victoria's breath hitch as the taller girl stifled a laugh, but she stepped forward and tugged Max around the corner of the building they stood next to and down the path ahead nonetheless.

"You're being a drama-queen, Max." Victoria said as she pulled the brunette to the front of a smallish building about a block from the waterfront.

"A little hypocritical coming from you, isn't it?" Max sniped back playfully as Victoria juggled both their conversation and talking to the hostess just inside the door.

"No. It's only hypocrisy when it comes from the rabble, Maxine. When I say it, it's an expert opinion: you're being a drama-queen. I'd know." 

The sincerity with which Victoria spoke seemed to catch both Max and the hostess herself off guard as she brought the two of them past islands of dimly lit tables towards a booth at the back corner of the restaurant.

The hostess nodded to them, mentioning offhandedly that a waiter would be with them in a moment. Max squeezed herself into the seat on the far side of the table and was glad that she could still see the door through the bustle of the restaurant if she craned her neck a little. 

Victoria followed the path of her eyes towards the door, but didn't make a point of it.

"You've never had actual sushi before, right?" She asked, idly paging through the exotic-looking menu without paying it too much attention.

Max shook her head emphatically, glad to have something to talk about.

"Not really, but a lot of it looks good. Really colorful." Max said, flipping through her copy as well. "What's that?" She asked, pointing at a picture of what looked like little orange balls wrapped in what she knew to be dried seaweed.

Victoria squinted a little as she leaned across the table to get a better view of the page, tracing a finger along the Japanese characters underneath the picture on the menu.

" _Ikura._ Salmon roe." She explained. "Not bad, but a little adventurous for a first-timer. You ever had caviar?"

It was Max's turn to arch an eyebrow.

"My dad's not Scrooge McDuck, so no, I haven't." Max jabbed, taking a bit more pleasure than was probably proper in Victoria's affronted expression.

"Then maybe give that one a pass until next time. Now _this-_ " she said, sliding her finger down the page to point towards a dark-brown and rich-looking something fixed to a pad of rice by a green band of seaweed, "is _unagi,_ and it's amazing."

It did look pretty good..

"Most people recommend starting out with salmon and tuna," she said neutrally, pointing towards a pair of orange and pinkish pieces near the top of the page, "but then it's easy to just get that far and stop, you know?" 

Oh, she was pretty sure she knew what Victoria was getting at.

"You're saying that people that only eat those two things are _'plebeians'_." Max said, smirking. The airquotes might have been unnecessary, but the blonde girl's response was worth it.

Victoria's mouth dropped open a little in shock, but she managed to pull herself back together quickly enough, whether from necessity or raw obstinance Max couldn't tell.

" _Taylor_." Victoria said, as though the other blonde's name was some sort of curse.

Max couldn't help it. She giggled.

"She said you'd say something like that. 'Sushi snob' may have been the _exact_ words she used, but I was a little sleepy at the time and might be misremembering."

Victoria growled.

"Salmon nigiri is the chicken nugget of real sushi and nothing will change my mind." She said, no longer even bothering to hide the disdain in her voice.

"What's that make, I dunno, California rolls?" Max asked innocently.

Victoria surprised her, leaning back in her seat as the beginnings of a smug smile twitched into being along the edge of one cheek.

"A fucking _prank,_ Caulfield." She said, and probably would have gone farther into her spiel if not for the waitress approaching with their drinks and a bowl of what appeared to be salted green pea pods.

The waitress, a pretty dark-complected girl that looked to be a few years older than they were asked if they were ready to order, and with a questioning glance Max's way, Victoria said that they were.

What came out of Victoria's mouth in the ensuing thirty seconds or so was a string of mixed Japanese and English that the server appeared to have no trouble following but left Max feeling a little lost. Victoria noticed the way Max was looking between the two of them and spoke.

"I got a bunch of different stuff to share that we can go over when it gets here, so if you want to pick something safe that you'll definitely like, that would probably be the best call." She said as an aside, and Max nodded in response.

She turned the menu back towards the second page and pointed towards what she recognized as a fried pork cutlet over a bowl of rice and greens. The pang in her belly as she'd looked at it was all the suggestion she needed.

"I'll take this one, please." She said, doing the best she could to keep her hunger out of her voice.

The server nodded quickly and made a note on her pad before asking what they wanted for drinks. Two orders of green tea later and the pair of them were alone again, the waitress stepping out of sight after a polite gesture.

"You got the katsudon, right?" Victoria asked, and Max nodded, remembering the word the girl that took their orders had used.

"Mhmm. It looked like a good compromise, so that's what I went with. What'd you get?" Max asked, curious.

"Unadon." She replied, then leaned forward a little to explain. "Basically the same thing you picked, but with grilled eel instead of pork."

Something had apparently shifted in Max's expression because Victoria then cocked her head to the side and continued, a little nonplussed.

"Don't look like that Caulfield, it's really normal-tasting. A little sweet, like Japanese barbecue, actually." 

Max was going to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt on this one. She trusted her.

"I also got us a few different kinds of nigiri and sashimi- sushi with and without rice- to try. Nothing too crazy, just some crab, eel, octopus, _toro_ , and salmon."

Max laughed, "The 'chicken-nugget of sushi'?"

Victoria shrugged her shoulders and grinned.

"I said it was vanilla, not that it wasn't good." Victoria said, pointing at her with one of the green pods she had picked out of the small bowl at the center of the table.

Max took one herself and looked it over, noticing the way the salt stuck to the skin of the warm beanpod. She glanced up at Victoria and watched as she pressed on one edge until a vibrant green bean poked out of the other side, which she then popped into her mouth with an idle flick of her wrist.

Max mirrored her, a content sigh escaping her as the salty flavor reached her tongue. She hadn't eaten all day, and _everything_ was delicious.

" _Edamame._ Steamed soybeans." Victoria said, taking another from the pile, sliding the bowl to the side as she did so to make space for their drinks which had just arrived. 

Next to the pot the waitress set in the center of the table went a pair of cups, and after them were two bowls of a cloudy ocher soup-broth that smelled absolutely amazing.

Max couldn't contain herself and she snagged the nearer of the two, wiggling restlessly in place as she inhaled the earthy steam. Inside the broth were little cubes of what she recognized as tofu, along with a few squares of seaweed. 

It tasted twice as good as it smelled, which was saying _a lot,_ Max thought.

Scalding the tip of her tongue was a small price to pay, all things considered.

Her second sip was considerably more careful despite that, and she noticed Victoria suppressing a smile of her own as the blonde watched her over her cup of tea. She knew what that look meant: there was a snarky comment incoming, and it was coming in fast.

Probably best to head that off while she could.

"It's nice being away from Blackwell, isn't it?" Max asked too-cheerily, feeling a little lame as soon as the words came out of her mouth. That was the best she had? Really?

Victoria surprised her again though; a tired but relieved sigh escaping her in response to the question. 

"It really is." Victoria admitted as she leaned back in her seat, unwinding as she did so. "It's good to be able to go off-script a little."

Victoria swirled her tea around in its glass as she considered what she was going to say next, and Max suddenly didn't feel so self-conscious about her question.

The blonde's lips quirked minutely.

"Dana'd be about three songs into her Top-40 playlist and I'd be trying to decide if _today_ was going to be the day I climbed out the window on a bedsheet and made a break for it, like Blackwell was an asylum or something." She finished, sipping her tea with a bemused expression on her face.

Max leaned forward across the table, grinning as she set her miso to the side as carefully as she could, yet somehow still managed to slosh a couple of drops onto the tabletop anyway.

"As if the valley-girl hiphop you blast at six in the morning is any less obnoxious," she snarked, "And besides, why not just hang out with the rest of the Mean Girls Club like you usually do?"

Victoria glanced back at her askance.

"Alright; first, fuck you Lamefield- it's a guilty pleasure and anybody that doesn't like it can cope." Victoria huffed, dropping her arm along the backrest before she continued. "Second, Taylor's usually up to her neck in overdue homework this far into the weekend, and Courtney has some sort of movie-buff group she goes to on Sunday nights."

Max didn't flinch at Victoria's tone, instead choosing to answer with a meaningful look of her own

"You let your minions have _off-days?"_ She asked, sounding maybe a little too surprised.

"Of course, Caulfield. You think I'm a cartoon villain or something?" Victoria replied with a huff. She sipped at her tea again before speaking again, "Besides, Taylor knows _way_ too much. Keeping her happy makes things a lot less stressful in the long run."

A faint buzz came from the direction of the blonde's purse, and Max watched as one corner of Victoria's mouth twitched in response.

 _"Speak of the devil.. "_ Victoria muttered mostly to herself as she checked her phone. Whatever she was reading caused the faintest pink flush to cross her cheeks for an instant before she schooled herself, hastily tapping out a response. When she was done, she unceremoniously dumped her phone back into the bag she had pulled it from and raised her eyes to meet Max's, her expression chagrined. 

"Taylor wants it to be known that she needs pictures." Victoria said, an eyeroll somehow _audible._

"On a scale of 1 to J. Jonah Jameson, how enthusiastic are these demands?" Max asked teasingly, relishing the few confused seconds it took for Victoria to get the reference.

"The crazy editor guy from those cheesy Spider-Man movies?" Victoria asked rhetorically, almost visibly appalled by Max's taste.

Her indulgent smile probably wasn't doing her any favors here, in fairness, and Victoria shook her head in mild disgust before she spoke again.

"I don't know, like a 7?" She said dismissively, but there was an undercurrent of something else in her tone. "There might have been a threat or two somewhere in there, but Taylor's all bark anyway. I'm not worried."

Victoria _said_ that, but there was something in the way the other girl was refusing to meet her eyes that told her she wasn't so sure.

Max reached across the table and gently took Victoria's hand in hers.

"It's okay 'Tori. Taylor scares me a little bit too."

The other girl immediately looked up -red in the face as though she'd been slapped- with an acidic barb springing to life on her lips. 

She was like a little blonde cobra.

She even hissed.

It was _way_ cuter than it had any right to be, but Max's chance to tell her exactly _how_ cute was interrupted by the server returning to their table, this time carefully balancing a tray laden with what Max would have first assumed was an art display, if it didn't smell so ridiculously good. 

The server glanced down at their joined hands on the tabletop, then briefly at the nakedly flustered expression on Victoria's face. 

"She's cute when she's cranky, right?" Max asked before her brain had the chance to tell her to stop.

The curly-haired waitress -Noelle, by the tag on her blouse- laughed as she placed their bowls down in the open space on the table.

"You both are, really." She said, and suddenly Max's was the one fighting down a blush, and she saw the mocha-skinned girl smile from the corner of her eye.

"If you two need anything just wave and I'll be right over, and enjoy your date." She said with an almost teasing lilt to her voice as she placed the slate holding their sushi between them. Max didn't miss the amusement plain on her face as she glanced between them one last time before departing.

For a handful of seconds, the only sound between them was the ambient bustle of the restaurant itself. Then, Victoria spoke.

"Did we just get bullied by our waitress?" The blonde asked, incredulous, and Max laughed.

" _You_ got bullied. _We_ got complimented." She said, then took a moment to look over all the food in front of them. If that meant she could plausibly ignore Victoria's glare while she did so, well, she -was- starving after all.. 

Her mind made up, she attacked the bowl of katsudon first, and she knew before she even closed her mouth she had made a good choice. The first bite actually froze her in place as she chewed, like her brain didn't believe what her scalded tongue was telling it.

Victoria just plucked a piece of crab nigiri off the artsy piece of slate between them with her fingers and smirked as it disappeared into her mouth.

"Good shit, right?" She asked after she swallowed, and Max had to agree. The next several minutes passed in a haze as she worked her way through most of the food in front of her with a seemingly mindless focus, pausing once or twice to take a piece of fish Victoria offered her.

Octopus was a bit too chewy, but the eel was good enough that she convinced Victoria to part with some of her unadon in exchange for an unspecified favor at some point in the future.

The blonde was, however, prepared to guard whatever it was that _to_ _ro_ happened to be with her life. Max took one look at the hard glint in Victoria's eye and decided not to press her luck. Instead, she bit into the piece of crab nigiri she had stolen while the blonde was distracted lording over the toro and signaled for their waitress, swallowing as she did so.

The well-dressed young woman didn't take long to notice Max's waving hand, and she quickly made her way towards their table with a smile that was a hair too mischievous to be fake. 

"Everything alright so far?" She asked easily, glancing curiously between the two of them as she set their empty dishes off to the side of the table.

Victoria was busy chewing, a blissfully vacant expression on her face, so Max answered for the both of them.

"Kinda perfect, actually." She said as she absently fiddled with her almost-empty teacup. "Maybe some more tea?"

Noelle nodded and made a note on the pale green pad in her hand.

"Have you thought about dessert?" She asked, and immediately Max's eyes widened as she remembered Taylor's very strongly worded suggestion.

"Oh! I was told not to leave without trying whatever mochi ice-cream is, if that's okay." Max said in a way that was somehow half a question.

The dark complected girl just hmm'd in agreement and made another note. She looked at Victoria for a second or two as well, but it only took about that long to notice that the blonde girl seemed to be content exactly the way she was.

Noelle stashed her notepad in a side pocket of her apron and expertly hefted their remaining dishes into one hand before she again disappeared down the aisle and into the back of the restaurant. 

She came back only a couple of minutes later with another decorative slate, this one ornamented with a handful of pastel oval shapes around the same size as smallish plums. They had been split in half and arranged in a spiral pattern around what looked to be a chocolate flower-bud, and had been topped with a variety of colorful things. Max recognized powdered sugar, chocolate sauce, and strawberry glaze, but the green and dark brown dustings were brand new.

Victoria forsook the offered tiny spoon entirely and popped one half of the mysterious brown ball into her mouth with her fingers, meeting Max's eyes and arching an eyebrow as she did so.

Max knew a challenge when she saw one, and quickly followed suit. 

_'Mocha',_ she thought idly the moment the cold spoonful met her tongue. The thin mochi itself was slightly gummy, but held the ice-cream together in a way that made it _really_ satisfying to chew. She swallowed carefully, then looked at Victoria appraisingly.  
  
"What's your favorite flavor?" Max asked, genuinely curious.

"Coffee," Victoria replied, carefully wiping her fingers with a cloth, "but strawberry and vanilla are close seconds. What about you?"

"Birthday cake-"

-Victoria laughed out loud- 

"-but vanilla hasn't let me down yet." Max said, suddenly a little self-conscious. 

_What was wrong with birthday-cake?_

Victoria brushed her fringe out of her eyes with a shake of her head and spoke up, her tone as wry as the expression on her face.

"Don't look at me like that, Caulfield," she said as she picked up half of the strawberry mochi, careful to take the thin sliver of actual strawberry garnishing it as she did. "It's not a personal attack or anything- birthday cake is just a really -you- flavor is all."

Max still scowled at her, unconvinced.

Victoria shrugged. "I kind-of _like_ your flavor, if you haven't noticed." She said, dropping the pinkish ball onto her tongue without breaking eye contact.

To Max's credit, she maintained her stony facade for all of three seconds before the first giggle managed to sneak out from behind the hand she had covering her mouth.

Victoria swallowed swiftly and instantly cringed, wincing at the cold, but quickly regained her composure despite the imminent headache.

"Coming on a bit too strong?" She asked rhetorically as she pressed the fingers of one hand to her temple.

"Just a little, maybe." Max answered anyway, her tone light enough to hide her dishonest intent as she used Victoria's moment of weakness to steal both halves of the vanilla mochi.

She wasn't as sneaky as she thought she was, and it was in the middle of the scuffle this caused that their waitress chose to come by, pausing only long enough to slide the bill onto the table before scurrying away to a safe distance.

It took all of Victoria's political acumen, but after a minute or so of heated negotiation the two of them managed to reach a payment plan they could both tolerate: Victoria would cover the bill, and Max would put her share towards the tip and maybe gas for the drive back home.

That seemed fair.

The pair said their goodbyes to Noelle when they passed her on the way towards the door, and with a final polite wave from Max, they stepped out into the Portland night.

At this time of year it was beautiful, in an eerie, urban sort of way.

The pale glow of the streetlamps above them spilled out and downward, forming long, thin islands of light interspersed along a dark winding stream of sidewalk. The long-limbed, almost gangly shadows cast by the people around them appeared to wade through this river-in-silhouette, and it was easy for Max to let herself unfocus, to mentally find the shot she knew was just in front of her.

-There-

There was a click somewhere to her side and she flinched on reflex, even as she heard Victoria make a triumphant noise at the top of her throat.

Max's heart beat in her ears for a moment and her fingers furrowed against her palm, tense like a cramped limb, but the eagerness in Victoria's voice-

_Victoria's voice_

-from so close helped her steady her breathing and re-center herself.

"This is a _good_ one, Max.." Victoria said, and after a moment of conscious effort, Max got her neck to relax enough that she could turn and check the display on the blonde girl's camera.

It really was a good picture, she thought. 

The focus had been set just behind the smallish group of people in the frame, fogging-over the outline of those at the forefront and instead focusing on the willowy and almost ethereal shadows drifting across the puddles of pale lamplight at their feet.

It was impersonal; almost cold in a way, but something about the image on the display was familiar, at least in abstract. Max remembered a storm from when she was little; a particularly bad super-cell that had knocked out power to most of the Bay for days. She remembered anxiously sitting in the living room with her parents, watching her dad work his fingers in front of a flickering oil lamp as they waited for the worst to pass. 

"They're almost like shadow puppets.. " Max said, gingerly reaching out towards the camera. She hesitated before her fingers had fully closed the distance, but Victoria picked up on what she wanted and stepped close, tilting the screen so Max could better see.

"Shadow puppets?" She asked, her voice trading in its usual bite for a softer sort of curiosity.

Max nodded her head absentmindedly, focused instead on the smell of heavy rain and kerosene in a too-dark house. 

-Look at the wolf, Max-

Her father's voice, sounding more tired than she remembered.

The air was thicker, _staler,_ too.

A slow exhale, until her lungs and head were empty and she couldn't hear the rain wash against the rooftop anymore.

She nodded again, almost clinically, and took the camera from Victoria's unresisting fingers. 

Victoria watched as Max quickly cleared the display and stepped away from her, tracing the rake of the brunettes eyes across the trickle of people down the causeway. She knew the instant Max found what she was looking for though, as she came to a stop mid-step only long enough to preserve her balance before sinking low into a crouch, resting the soft underside of her elbow against the top of her knee to keep the camera still.

Max's expression was blank as she pressed the shutter-release, but Victoria didn't miss the way the brunette recoiled away from the camera the moment she had taken her shot.

She stood, and in two quick steps had crossed the space between them, handing the camera back to Victoria wordlessly as soon as she was within arm's reach.

She never even looked at the display.

Instead, she laughed; silent except for the muted rush of breath from her reddening nose, and closed Victoria's fingers back around the shell of her camera.

"Yeah. Shadowpuppets." Max said, her tone tired but firm.

She shivered, then pulled her cardigan closer around herself and tilted her head towards the mouth of the sidestreet they had come down originally.

"Wanna get some pictures of the waterfront before it gets too cold?" She asked, and Victoria considered her response before she replied. 

"We can, as long as it doesn't take too long. The last thing either of us needs is you getting sick and blaming me for it." Victoria huffed, a bit too dramatic to be serious. 

Max smiled again, this one significantly more genuine than the last.

"Look at you acting like you _don't_ want more cliche moody pictures to put in your portfolio." Max jabbed over her shoulder, biting down the beginnings of a grin as Victoria puffed up defensively.

_Right on cue_

"Excuse you?" The blonde girl said, looking like she'd been struck. "I know it's hard for the untrained eye to understand _homage,_ Caulfield, but please at least _try_ to keep up."

"' _Homage',_ right." Max prodded, disguising her smile by looking down to button her cardigan mid-step. "Is that what you call your Richard Avedon look-alikes?"

Victoria sputtered something indignant that Max couldn't make out, but the intent was clear. It took a deep breath, but she collected herself well enough to carry on.

"I am _not_ going to be called 'cliche' by a doe-eyed wallflower with a fetish for _polaroid selfies_ of all things."

Max scoffed and began counting off on her fingers, "Okay; first, I've touched my polaroid maybe _twice_ this weekend; second, _you've_ taken more pictures of me this week than I have; and third, you _like_ my selfies- you're just grumpy because I'm picking on you."  
  
Victoria's mouth immediately opened as though to respond, but her acerbic look quickly faded into one of resignation as she thought through Max's reply.  
  
She pinched the bridge of her nose just below her brow and shook her head in frustration.  
  
"Let's just take the damned pictures and go home before you find a way to get pneumonia, okay?"  
  
Max's long backward steps towards the waterfront became considerably more energetic as a victorious smile crept onto her face.

"You're lucky you're cute when you pout, you know?"

"I'm cute _all_ the time, Lamefield. I'm glad you noticed." Victoria cut back almost distractedly, but instead of continuing into an attack the way Max had expected, she paused.

The rest of the walk was quiet aside from the sound of their footsteps, and soon they managed to reach the edge of the path overlooking the dark banks of the Willamette. The wind blowing in off the waterfront was heavy and cool, but not particularly uncomfortable. She turned, and saw Victoria was already looking her way, an uncertain look on her face.  
  
This close to the river, her breath came out in little grey clouds.

"So, it wasn't just me, then." Victoria said quietly; making adjustments to her camera just to have something to do with her hands.

"Hmm?" Max said inelegantly as she turned, pressing her hip into the chill metal handrail for support. "What do you mean?"

Victoria was silent for a beat as she stared down at the pale reflection in her viewfinder.

"You really haven't been taking many pictures recently." She said, and a moment later Max nodded in agreement. 

"Yeah. It's not just you." Max admitted. She dragged the fingers of one hand along the top of the cold railing behind her, suddenly uneasy.

Victoria twisted the camera in her hand and pressed her finger against the shutter-release, but hesitated. 

"I just.." 

She swallowed, then tried again.

".. It's strange, Max, seeing you without your camera. I'm not trying to act like I know what you're going through right now, but at least for me, just taking pictures helps me.. I guess, put some distance between my head and all the bullshit, if that makes sense."

There was the _-snap-_ of a shutter, but Max was expecting it; had _been_ expecting it. 

She didn't flinch.

Instead, she watched Victoria pull her lip roughly between her teeth while her nerves spilled out of her in thin ribbons of mist as she spoke.

"When I was little, I would write. Anything. Everything. I read _Leaves of Grass_ when I was 11 or so, and from then until high-school all I really did was write. I'd read some of it to my parents; the less personal stuff, at least. Most of it wasn't very good; _definitely_ not enough to make art-gallery owners like them ooh and ahh the way I did over Whitman, but it _meant_ something to me, you know? Notebooks full of sonnets I wrote to caterpillars, lines in free-verse about the empty bird's-nest in the tree outside my bedroom window, or just pairs of words I thought sounded nice together. Anything. Notebook after notebook. Every now and then, I'd get a smile out Dad, but all mom ever did was nod her head. No matter what I wrote, or how much I poured into it."

The shutter _-snapped-_ again.

"The summer before I started high-school, we moved. None of my notebooks survived the trip. My mother hadn't put them with the things we were bringing with us to the new house, and they had been thrown away."

_-snap-_

"I was maybe a little too upset, and there was an argument. It was bad to begin with, but got worse as I realized, gradually, that my mother genuinely didn't believe she'd done anything wrong, and didn't understand why I was as torn up as I was. It got bad enough that Dad heard us from his office, and had come down to see what all the screaming was about."

Victoria pulled the camera away from her face and looked at Max through the weak glow of the display and the fog of her breath.

"Dad took a minute or so to piece together what had happened, told my mother he was going to have a discussion with me, and brought me upstairs. I though he was going to kill me."

At Max's look of alarm, Victoria blanched.

"Figuratively, Caulfield." She said quickly, raising her hand in a halting motion. "Anyway, Dad brought me upstairs to his office, and told me to sit down in the big armchair on the other side of his enormous desk. We talked about a few things; how I felt, what I thought about what had happened- stuff like that, and when I had calmed down enough, he explained what was wrong."

At that, she raised her camera back up to her eye, framed her subject, and paused; her finger loose against the shutter-release.

"It turns out, my mom has a series of conditions that, among other things, mean she's incapable of the same kinds of responses most people have to emotional stimulus- she doesn't _feel_ the way normal people feel. On one hand, it helps make her one of the best maxilofacial specialists on the West Coast, which is amazing."

_-snap-_

"On the other, it meant I'd never have been able to make her smile with just some pretty words on paper. It'd be like singing to someone without ears; masturbatory, in a way, if the only one that can hear you sing is you, you know?"

Victoria shook her head and tucked the longest bit of her fringe behind an ear with an idle motion that ended with her head pointing mostly skyward.

Max watched as a long, foggy plume of breath bled itself upward into the night.

She felt the ghost of a tingle in her hand, like ants under her nails. 

Victoria clicked her tongue dismissively against the roof of her mouth and looked back down, through the viewfinder and towards the river.

"To cut this exercise in angst and indulgence short before I _completely_ forget my point, that argument -and everything that followed- tainted the love I had for writing. Every now and then I'll scribble something in the margins of some homework or quote something cheesy on my whiteboard, but I haven't been able to seriously _write_ anything ever sense then. I just remember the flat look on my mother's face and then my pen is down and I'm doing something else."

She huffed and cupped her forehead tiredly in her hand, letting her camera drop to dangle from her neck by its smooth leather strap. Max could just barely make our her eyes through the splay of her fingers and the anemic wash of a streetlamp a handful of yards away.

"The point I'm trying to make, Max, is that you are too fucking _good_ to put your camera down unless you absolutely have to; not for spots in a gallery somewhere, or to make the important people in your life proud, but for _you._ It's fucking _cruel_ when the thing you throw yourself into to cope with all the garbage becomes another reminder of the bullshit it's supposed to be helping you push through."

Victoria stepped forward a pace or two and turned; half towards Max braced against the rails, and half towards the moonstruck water behind her. She wrung an anxious hand through her hair, stopping just outside of arm's reach.  
  
She swallowed.

" _Fuck_ Mark Jefferson." Victoria hissed, the cold night air making the words come out as steam. "He's the entire reason I picked up a camera in the first place, and I _refuse_ to let him be the reason I put it down. I'm one of the best photographers in one of the best programs in the country and I'm not going to stop taking pictures until he's a fucking _footnote_ in the _worst_ book they write about me fifty years from now, and I will be _damned_ if the only reason I'm the best photographer to ever leave Blackwell is because _you_ retired too early, Max." 

Max felt a burn in the back of her throat that made it hard to speak. 

"Victoria, it's not that easy-" She began to protest, but the blonde pushed through anyway. 

"I _know,_ Max. Just.." The blonde interrupted herself and exhaled, heavy and slow.

After a second of silence she lifted her head and blinked once, twice-

"This has been the worst week of my life and I can't even imagine how much worse it's been for you. All I'm asking is that you not let one week of hell rob you of what should be a _lifetime_ of peace and recognition. Your camera fit you better at eighteen than Mark Jefferson's did in his entire fucking life, and you deserve to _know_ that every single day of the rest of yours. You deserve to be able to walk into any lecture hall in the world thirty years from now with that fossil you call a camera and have students fighting tooth and nail just to hear you speak. You deserve-"

Victoria's teeth clicked together sharply as she stopped herself. Her exhale was more forceful this time. When she spoke again, her voice was low.

"You deserve.. so much more than _this,_ Max."

Max's hip ached from the weight she was resting on it, pressed against the railing, but she wasn't sure how much she trusted her legs at that moment. The metal was cold through her jeans, and even colder on her naked fingers, but she couldn't pull herself to push away.

"It.. means a lot; all of this, that is." Max said, her throat strangely dry. "I'm not sure I really deserve most of it, but I guess we can't all be walking balls of confidence like Victoria Chase, right?" Max joked weakly.

Subdued as it was, Victoria's laugh was still genuine. 

"It's a front sometimes, but I'm pretty sure you already knew that.

"Yeah." Max nodded softly. "Your secret's safe with me though."

"Better be, Caulfield. I know where you sleep and I'm petty." Victoria replied pointedly, but there was a glint in her eye as she spoke that blunted most of her usual edge.

A tiny smile twitched into being on Max's mostly-healed lips.

"I'll have to move in with Kate then; she'll protect me." She said, and her smile grew a little more as she saw Victoria's reaction; even in the weak light of the streetlamp some distance away, Max could tell that the flush on her cheeks was just as real as the snarl forming just below it.

Max stepped forward and stopped just short of coming toe-to-toe with the taller girl. She reached out, as quickly as she was able without upsetting her still-unsteady balance, and took Victoria's hand between both of her own.

It was warm.

"What the _fuck_ Caulfield, are you part lizard or something?" Victoria said, flinching away from her cold fingers on reflex, but Max's grip was firm. 

" _Shh,_ Victoria." Max whispered, and surprisingly enough, the blonde listened.

"I'm not sure I can ever live up to your expectations for me," Max confessed quietly, "But just knowing you're willing to believe in me when I don't believe in myself makes me feel.. a lot of things, really. 'Warm', but not _just_ warm, you know? It's a pressure, but a good kind of pressure; something that builds up gently and fills you from the inside, strong and soft all at once."

Max paused for a moment, clearly trying to keep a smile from splitting her face.

"Look Victoria, I'm -not- a poet. One day soon I'll be able to hand you a picture or play you a song that explains _perfectly_ how you make me feel, but until then we're going to both have to settle for me being clumsy with my words; you mean a lot to me, and there's very little I want more than to be even half the person some of the people in my life are convinced I can be."

Max pushed herself up onto the tips of her toes and slowly pressed her lips against Victoria's. The warm hand she held between hers tensed against her palms, but she didn't let go. Instead, she shifted her grip, tugging the taller girl downward into her as she did. She felt more than heard Victoria's token protest hum against her lips, but the unabashed hold the blonde girl had along her waist told her everything she really needed to know.

Max parted her lips only far enough to trap the lower ridge of Victoria's own between them, pulling gently to get the other girl's attention. Victoria's fingers dug into her skin in the soft space just below her ribs, but with some coaxing she managed to meet Max's eyes, as hooded as they were.

Max pulled away, and carefully didn't look too long at the slick rouge she had just abandoned to the cold October air. 

"As much as I'd like to stay like this for a little longer, I think the responsible move is to head home before we freeze, right?" She asked and, after a brief pause, heard a grumble of agreement come from somewhere above her.  
  
"If it were even five degrees warmer I'd fight you over this, you know." Victoria said, and Max felt the taller girl's hold on her waist tighten as though to emphasize her point.  
  
"We could always turn the heat on in the car?" Max replied, her tone just suggestive enough to be a question.  
  
Victoria laughed.  
  
"You talk a good game, but I know what you look like when you're sleepy now Caulfield." Victoria said plainly.

Max looked up at the smirking blonde with the best glare she could muster while trying not to yawn.

That bitch.

"You can't bluff for shit and I _know_ you, Max. I'll bet you anything you'll be out by the time we get onto the highway." Victoria said, sliding her hand off Max's hip and down towards where their wrists met in the space between them.   
  
It was -really- hard to focus on not letting Victoria walk all over her when she was doing the thing with her fingers, but Max was going to try her best anyway. Keep it simple, right?  
  
"You'll bet _anything?"_ She asked, quirking an eyebrow teasingly as she did. A little heavy-handed, but it should throw Victoria off enough that she'd slip up somehow.

The blonde's reply came quickly and without reservation.

"Sure; fuck it Caulfield. Anything." Victoria said, almost aggressively smug. "If you can stay awake long enough for us to get to the highway, I'll give you anything you want."  
  
"And if you're right and I fall asleep?" Max asked, a strange mix of curious and concerned. The blonde girl was _entirely_ too confident.

Victoria made a show of being lost in thought; shifting her gaze out over Max's shoulder and biting the corner of her lip theatrically as she did. It was only a beat later though when both of her brows shot upward and she made a pleased sounding noise in the back of her throat.  
  
"I have a _great_ idea, Max." Victoria said cheerily as she pulled on Max's wrist and started them both back down the waterfront path to where they had parked.   
  
"Are you going to share with the class, or just stand there and gloat?" Max asked, not eager for Victoria to have even more leverage. The girl was already impossible as it was.  
  
Victoria turned to look back over her shoulder at Max, careful not to let go of her hand or miss a step as she walked.  
  
"If I win, you let me pick what you wear to our Halloween party. No objections," Victoria said, "And no weaseling out. Sound fair?"  
  
Max opened her mouth to voice the first of several complaints, but paused. Victoria just wanted to pick her outfit, and in return had given Max the equivalent of a blank check for her own prize.  
  
Honestly, that wasn't a bad deal.

"I accept." She said evenly, and she tried _very_ hard to ignore the flicker in Victoria's eyes when she did so. How bad could it possibly be?  
  
Her attempt to think that through was interrupted by the happy chirp of Victoria's keyfob as they came within range of their car. Victoria let go of her hand and opened the passenger door before stepping around and opening her own. After walking around for so long, being able to sit down and relax felt amazing. It helped that the interior of the Miata was as comfortable as it was. Max reached to the side and shut the door with a little effort, and when she leaned back into her seat, she caught the tail end of Victoria fiddling with a knob on the central console. Max hardly had time to wonder why the blonde girl's smile was so vicious before she realized with dawning horror exactly what she had gotten herself into.  
  
Heated seats.  
  
Victoria turned the key fully in the ignition and the quiet purr of the engine filled the cabin for only a moment before it was drowned out somewhat by a soft twanging melody coming from the stereo. 

_Was that Alt-J?  
  
_She huffed and let her head thump against the backrest.  
  
"You're fucking _cheating_ _,_ you know that right?" Max said despondently. Even now she could feel herself melting into the cushions.  
  
"Don't be a sore loser, _Maxine._ " Victoria teased as she slipped the car into reverse and pulled them out onto the street.   
  
"I haven't even lost yet, ' _Tori"_ Max tried to snipe back, but her words had slurred together a little towards the end. Her mouth was _way_ too dry.

She didn't have to be looking at the girl in the driver's seat to see the self-satisfied expression on her face.

"If you didn't want me to know your chillout mix, you shouldn't have let me hear you play it." Victoria said primly. "What if I had impure intentions?"  
  
Max didn't have the energy to call the blonde girl out for that one. Instead, she wiggled down into her seat a little, feeling Victoria's eyes on her a couple of seconds later.  
  
"You can lay the seat back a bit if you want to, you know. I won't judge." She heard the blonde girl say faux-sweetly.   
  
She would have responded, but her eyelids were heavy and her words were slow. She blinked, and in the time it took her eyes to open again they were on a stretch of road she didn't recognize and slowing down.

With a grunt of effort, Max pulled herself back upright and turned her head to look towards the driver's seat.  
  
They were stopped at a red light, and Victoria was looking back at her. The watchful glint in her eye was present as usual, but the curve of her smile was was so much less sharp than Max had ever seen it in the hallways at Blackwell. There, it was a thin sort of thing- hooked and made to wound. If she looked hard enough she could still see the familiar edges just underneath the surface; ever-present but sheathed, like a cat's claws. Was it weird that she found that comforting in a way? Like laying on a tiger's chest, floating on warm nothingness as the thunder sung her to sleep. Victoria mouthed something as the light turned green, but she couldn't hear it over the rumble in her ears.  
  
There probably wasn't a safer place to rest her head on earth.  
  


* * *

  
There was warmth.  
  
Warmth, and a ticklish sort of pressure. She grumbled in protest and rolled her head to the side, but the warm pressure followed her.  
  
Slowly, she opened her eyes.  
  
It was dark, but there was enough residual moonlight to see the shadowed interior of a car as her surroundings came into focus.  
  
The passenger door was open, and she could make out a lean silhouette halfway kneeling in the doorway.  
  
"If Mr. Madsen comes by in a couple of hours and finds you passed out in the passenger seat of my car, he's going to have questions I don't have answers for, Max."   
  
Max groaned and started to speak, but an urge to stretch overwhelmed her. She tensed from her shoulders to her knees, and after a moment of helplessness -and a yawn that felt like it'd never end- she recovered enough to turn sideways in her seat and plant her feet on the familiar asphalt of Blackwell's parking lot.  
  
_Much_ better.

"I've got exactly one 'Get Out of Jail Free' card with Mr. Madsen; I think we'd be okay." Max said as she stood. It was wobbly at first, but after a moment of effort (and another full-body stretch) she was able to find her balance and step away from the car, shutting the door behind her with an idle movement of her arm.  
  
She watched as Victoria stepped around behind her towards the rear of the car, and heard the blonde huff quietly as she opened and shut the trunk over the course of a few seconds. When she returned, she held a bundle of their discarded clothes under one arm and a bottle of water under the other. She unscrewed the top and took a sip with one impatient motion, then capped and tossed the bottle to Max as she stepped past.  
  
"If I'm thirsty, you're thirsty." Victoria said plainly as she shrugged, catching Max's look down at the bottle then back up at her. "I'm doing laundry in the morning anyway; I'll get your stuff back to you after class if that works?" She said as she flicked her eyes to the bundle of clothes she held.  
  
Max nodded in agreement as best she could while shamelessly draining what was formerly a bottle of water.  
  
The motion-sensitive lights in front of the dorm snapped on as they approached and Max winced as the bright light blinded her for a moment, but she felt something warm press against her wrist and tug her forward.  
  
"Alright Cave-Max, there's no need to be dramatic." Came Victoria's voice from just in front of her, and as tired as Max was the quip still made her feel better.  
  
"Cave-Max?" She asked as they rounded the hallway towards the stairwell, and Victoria turned to look at her as she stepped onto the landing.  
  
"You know, like the cave-people in _'The Descent'?"_ Victoria said, but then her eyes widened and she amended; "But like, significantly cuter, just so we're clear."  
  
Max's look was blank as Victoria spoke, and she saw Victoria's head tilt as she recognized Max's confusion.  
  
"You know, _'The Descent'_ ? One of the best horror films ever made? Feminist _tour de force?_ That one?"  
  
Max blinked owlishly as they reached the top of the stairs and stepped off into their hallway.  
  
Victoria shook her head and grumbled something under her breath as she pinched her brow between her fingers.  
  
"Alright, we're finishing our next movie night with _'The Descent'_ then. Sweet T can't do horror movies, and Courtney does horror movies way too well. Does that work for you?"  
  
Max thought for a second, skeptical.  
  
"Okay, but only if I get to pick the two movies we watch before it, alright?"  
  
Victoria immediately nodded her head in agreement and grinned.  
  
"Perfect." She said contentedly as they came to a stop at the end of the hall, each in front of their doors.   
  
Victoria opened her mouth as though to speak, but closed it after a moment's hesitation.   
  
Max watched as the blonde's eyes flicked over her in the darkness. After a second's consideration, she stepped forward.  
  
Her arms cinched behind the narrow span of Victoria's back effortlessly as she pulled the taller girl close. She couldn't quite hear the blonde's heart beating, but if she focused, she could just barely feel the steady thump of it against her cheek.

"Thanks for all this, Victoria.. " Max said softly, relaxing her grip somewhat as she did. She felt the taller girl shift her weight against her momentarily, and suddenly the warm pressure from earlier was back. Victoria was running her fingers through her hair, and it felt _amazing.  
  
_"It was dinner and some pictures, Caulfield. Don't get your panties in a bunch." Victoria replied quickly, but despite what she said, her tone was low and calm.   
  
She never stopped moving her fingers, either.  
  
Max laughed, even though most of it got lost in Victoria's chest.  
  
"I meant for _everything._ " She said, then pulled her head back so she could look into the green eyes above her. Victoria immediately flushed scarlet even in the low light of the hallway, but Max continued unperturbed. "I know I keep repeating myself, but I _mean_ it; I don't know where I'd be right now if you weren't here with me."  
  
Victoria considered for a moment.  
  
"Probably Kate's room." She said, but it lacked her usual venom.  
  
Max recoiled.

"I was trying to be _sincere_ , you unromantic ass." Max said, her expression halfway between offended and amused.  
  
Victoria shrugged as well as she could without taking her fingers out of Max's hair or her arm from around her waist.  
  
"I know, but don't sell Kate short; she's a good friend. She'd have helped get you through all this."  
  
Max stilled, slightly stunned. She knew Victoria wasn't wrong, but to hear something like that from Victoria herself was.. significant.  
  
Some of her surprise must have been evident because suddenly Victoria's smug grin was back in full force, even if it wasn't enough bravado to wipe the blush off her face.  
  
"Shocked?" Victoria asked quietly. "I might not agree with everything she preaches, but she's a good friend to you, Caulfield. You'd make it through this whether or not I was here to help. You're strong like that." Victoria admitted, her expression faltering towards the end. She swallowed, and a moment later her grin was back as though it had never left.  
  
"Fortunately for everyone, I _am_ here, and I can do things Kate _can't_ do."  
  
Max's eyebrows quirked upward in surprise as she spoke.  
  
"Like what?" She said, and Victoria's grin turned feral in the moonlight streaming through the window at the end of the hall.  
  
_"This."_ She whispered, and in an instant the pressure on Max's hip doubled as fingers knotted in her hair and pulled her _up._ They stumbled backward two steps and then three as they were unbalanced, but Victoria caught both of their weight against the door to her room with an ease that was almost casual. Max's eyes widened for only a moment before they closed on reflex. Victoria's kiss was unhurried but _heavy;_ a sort of slow, inevitable, massive heat that was uniquely _hers._

It was something like a sunrise; warm and relentless and constant and blazing and _vast_ in a way that washed out everything else in the sky, until there was nothing left but her and the sunlight on her skin.  
  
Absently, she felt her own fingers work against the cloth separating the two of them; desperate to pull as much of that warmth into herself as she could before it was gone.  
  
She felt the beginnings of a happy laugh form against her lips and growled as they left her own. She felt Victoria pull away from her and something inside her lashed out, low and spine-deep.  
  
She felt her slick lips pull against her teeth as she stepped forward on instinct. She _pushed_ , driving up from her feet to her hips to her core and _out._ Victoria's back met her door again with a low -thud- and she followed, unwilling to let even an inch come between them. Her knee came upward, wedging itself between Victoria's thighs at the same time her grip split on the blonde girl's back; one hand surging upward to take the nape of her neck and the other hand dipping low on Victoria's hip.  
  
Her lips met Victoria's for a moment, -fleetingly- before she dove low, burying her face in the hollow of the blonde's neck. Her mouth opened even as her fingers bit into the flesh they held. Anything-  
  
_-anything-_

-to bring them _closer._

She inhaled, half-ragged and almost a gasp.   
  
Vanilla.  
  
_Vanilla and sweat.  
  
_She could feel Victoria's pulse racing against her tongue and every beat made her breath stutter in her lungs. She could feel her fingers shaking.  
  
Victoria's grip in her hair was tight, but wasn't pulling her away.  
  
..  
  
Max paused, and a moment later her teeth closed around air.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
Max's breath left her in a frustrated hiss, her face still pressed into the soft arch of Victoria's throat.  
  
She began to speak, to say -something-, but she suddenly felt Victoria _giggle_ underneath her.  
  
She pulled back and met the pair of green eyes looking down at her in the dark, taking in the confusion and embarrassment equally plain on the brunette's face.  
  
"Max, are you a _biter?"_ Victoria asked bluntly, her expression a mixture of surprised and.. awed?  
  
Max blanched, unable to bring herself to reply, but Victoria seemed to take her silence as answer enough.

"It looks like you really _do_ learn something new every day.. " She said quietly, straightening herself as best she could given her position. She looked ready to prod Max some more, but a glance at the mortified expression on the freckled girl's face made her reconsider.  
  
"Max?" She asked, and a moment later the brunette managed to meet her eyes, as embarrassed as she was.

Victoria grinned.  
  
"You're a grown woman, Caulfield. You're allowed to have kinks." She said plainly. She could tease Max about this all she wanted later. _"You're allowed to have kinks._ If it makes you feel any better, you already know one or two of mine, so if anything, we're even now."  
  
Max groaned and her forehead came to rest against Victoria's collarbone.  
  
"You don't think I'm.. weird?" Max asked quietly, and Victoria laughed again.  
  
"Of course I do, but you're _my_ kind of weird." The taller girl said, fighting down an amused smile. "We can go over this the right way when we get some alone time later, but for now since I know you won't be able to sleep without _something,_ just know that you don't have anything to worry about from me as long as you're willing to step back if I ask you to, and let me know a little in advance before you spring any curveballs, okay?"  
  
Victoria's expression didn't seem to be anything but genuine, so Max nodded her head.  
  
"I'll text you in the morning then?" She asked cautiously, and felt most of her anxiety leave her as Victoria nodded her head in response.  
  
"Definitely. If I don't text back right away, I'm either still running or in the shower. Worst case scenario, knock on Taylor's door and tell her what's up and she'll probably know what to do. Sound good?"  
  
Max nodded her head emphatically, then took a step back towards her own doorway. Before turning the handle however, she paused, looking back towards where Victoria stood quickly tapping at the dim screen of her phone.  
  
"Good night, Victoria." Max said as she stepped into her bedroom, and Victoria surprised her by scoffing.  
  
"It was a _perfect_ night, Caulfield. Now get some fucking sleep." She said, unlocking her door with a click.  
  
Max laughed tiredly at the reply, and when she opened her eyes, it was just in time to watch the door click shut behind Victoria on her way into her room.  
  
She turned and stepped over the threshold into her own room, not even bothering to turn the lights on to see as she closed her door absently with a foot, vaulted dizzily over her guitar laying on the floor, and peeled her way out of the layers of clothes trying to smother her.  
  
' _I'll shower in the morning..'_ She thought sleepily as she balled up her pants and blouse and tossed them carelessly into the hamper in the corner of the room.   
  
Her knees hit the top of her bed first, followed a beat later by her face and hands as they dug hungrily into the cool, soft mass of her favorite pillow.  
  
_'It's so good to be home..'_  
  
It really, really was.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. 
> 
> Alright, tentative final editing pass is complete. The only thing I'm not completely okay with here is how well I communicated an undertone in the scene in the hallway at the end. As a hint, it isn't happy, and calls back to an implication from very early in the story. Let me know if you picked it up or if you're completely lost; I'll see if I can smooth it out somehow.
> 
> Chapter 9: Oats We Sow, is being written right now. Expect it to be closer to the usual length- this chapter is twice the average, for reference.
> 
> There's a ton of scenes I absolutely can't wait to write coming up soon, and if I can get my pacing situated, there are a couple of oneshots I'd like to write too.
> 
> As always, love y'all.  
> alt_


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